As the last article in our staff spotlight series, learn more about Executive Director, Brook Lenker, and how his early environmental work in Pennsylvania brought him to FracTracker Alliance.
Time with FracTracker: 5 years
Education: I graduated from Towson University near Baltimore in 1989 with a degree in geography and environmental planning. I loved the course of study so much that I enrolled in the graduate school and worked on my master’s degree in the same field.
Office Location: Camp Hill, PA
Title: Executive Director
What do you actually do in that role?
From my office in Camp Hill, I lead a wonderful, talented team of eight staff working from five locations around the country. My role is to make sure FracTracker has the strategic direction, staff capacity, financial resources, and board leadership to be effective, impactful.
Previous Positions and Organizations
Brook during a creek cleanup
While I was evening commuting to Maryland, I served as program director for a county recreation department in Central Pennsylvania. Later, I landed a position with the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay, eventually becoming the Director of Watershed Stewardship. The activities we coordinated – river sojourns, stream and habitat restoration, stormwater education, and more – took me around the multi-state watershed even though I was based in Harrisburg.
My next stop was the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources where for over seven years I served as the Manager of Education and Outreach. My responsibilities included community relations and promoting ecological awareness and stewardship. A program called iConservePA was a focal point. My colleagues and I used creative communications strategies to encourage Pennsylvanians to “Take Conservation Personally.” This and other agency initiatives suffered when fracking began to boom.
How did you first get involved working on oil and gas issues / fracking?
As I became demoralized by the degradation I witnessed and read about, I was given the chance to direct FracTracker. I took the reins in late 2011 as the website transitioned out of the University of Pittsburgh. By the summer of 2012, we formed the nonprofit FracTracker Alliance, and I became its executive director. Sometimes things happen for a reason.
It’s hard to believe I’ve been at the helm of FracTracker for nearly five years. Knowing that we’re a helpful force in the fight against the harms of extraction is rewarding. The projects and the people with whom I interact are inspiring. While the challenges facing our planet are daunting and, at times, depressing, I’m lucky to be able to exercise my convictions in the workplace.
What is one of the most impactful projects that you have been involved in with FracTracker?
Brook Lenker in Argentina
It’s been an unforgettable journey so far. I’ve learned so much and met so many great people – from different states and different countries. Perhaps my greatest experience to date was a tour to Argentina in May 2015. Alongside reps from Ecologic Institute and Earthworks, we presented to hundreds of people at different venues including the senate of Argentina. As I spoke of the insights of FracTracker and other researchers, an interpreter put my words into Spanish. I felt overwhelmingly humble and grateful.
Environmental injustice knows no bounds, but good people everywhere make a profound difference.
As part of our staff spotlight series, learn more about Karen Edelstein and how her work through FracTracker has changed the course of drilling in New York State.
Time with FracTracker: I started with FracTracker in 2010 as a contract employee and then in 2012 started working 25 hours a week as a regular part-time staffer.
Education: M.P.S. in Environmental Management, and B.S. in Natural Resources, both from Cornell University
Office Location: Ithaca, NY
Title: Eastern Program Coordinator
What do you actually do in that role?
My job has changed a lot since I started working for FracTracker. I came to FracTracker when many New Yorkers were frantically learning as much as they could about unconventional drilling for natural gas, which at the time, appeared likely to start happening in the near future. Over a period of years, using credible public data, I have created dozens of maps on topics about geology, water withdrawals, waste transportation, hydrocarbon storage, and documenting the surging movements of public opposition to high-volume hydraulic fracturing for gas. The maps were informative to a wide range of decision-makers, environmental advocates, educators, and citizens.
Now, I’m working more broadly on projects up and down the East Coast. These projects include documenting controversies surrounding pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure, and the public opposition to this development. I also support FracTracker’s mission to educate and report on the alternatives to fossil fuel infrastructure, and have been looking at renewable energy issues, as well.
Previous Positions and Organizations
Over the past 16 years, I’ve used geographic information systems in positions at numerous environmental and educational organizations, working for land trusts and other nonprofit agencies, secondary school teacher development programs, and county government agencies. Prior to that, I worked as a naturalist and environmental educator for ten years.
How did you first get involved working on oil and gas issues / fracking?
Karen Edelstein, FracTracker’s Eastern Program Coordinator
I live in a rural area of New York State that was in the cross-hairs of the oil and gas industry about 9 years ago. Landsmen were at the door asking me to lease my land, “thumper trucks” were pounding the roads trying to get seismic readings, and helicopters were overhead dropping bundles of equipment to conduct testing. Few people, including me, understood the enormity of what was going on. I joined a few community groups that wanted to know more.
Shortly after a multi-year work contract I had at a local college ended, in 2010, I met the (then small) staff of FracTracker at a public training event in Central New York. The organization had just been formed, and the presentation was all about mapping in Pennsylvania. I went right up to the director and told him how much we needed similar work in New York State, and I could be the person to do it! I started working part-time for FracTracker within the month.
What is one of the most impactful projects that you have been involved in with FracTracker?
Our map of New York State bans and moratoria on high volume hydraulic fracturing received a great deal of attention in the years leading up to the eventual statewide ban on the process. Over time, close to 200 municipalities enacted legislation. It was rewarding to document this visually through a progression of dozens of maps during that period. These maps of how municipality after municipality invoked New York State home rule provided important touchstones for community activists, too. In late 2014, in their announcement about the decision to ban HVHF in NYS, New York’s Health and Environment commissioners cited FracTracker’s map as an indication of patterns of strong ambivalence towards the process among state residents:
Together DEC’s proposed restrictions and local bans and moratoria total approximately 7.5 million acres, or about 63% of the resource. Here’s a summary of the local government restrictions and prohibitions. And the picture even gets cloudier. The practical impact of the Dryden decision I mentioned earlier is that even more acreage may be off-limits to HVHF drilling. Within the 4.5 million acres NOT excluded by the state or local restrictions, approximately 253 towns have zoning and 145 have no zoning. Each town with zoning would have to determine whether its current law restricts or even allows HVHF. So those towns without zoning would still have to decide whether to allow HVHF virtually anywhere or to prescribe where drilling could occur. The uncertainty about whether HVHF is an authorized use would undoubtedly result in additional litigation. It would also result in a patchwork of local land use rules which industry has claimed would utterly frustrate the rational development of the shale resource. Clearly the court’s decision shifted the battleground to town boards, to as evidenced by the conflicting claims of the opposing stakeholder groups. According to the Joint Landowners Coalition, many towns in the Southern Tier have passed resolutions favoring HVHF, while the online map from FracTracker.org indicates that many of the same towns are moving toward a ban. Indeed, our own informal outreach to towns in the Southern Tier confirms that even towns that support HVHF decisions are still up in the air. I’d say that the prospects for HVHF development in NY are uncertain, at best.
As many of you know, educating the public is a FracTracker Alliance core value – a passion, in fact. In addition to our maps and resources, we help to provide hands-on education, as well. The extraordinary Bill Hughes is a FracTracker partner who has spent decades “in the trenches” in West Virginia documenting fracking, well pad construction, water withdrawals, pipeline construction, accidents, spills, leaks, and various practices of the oil and gas industry. He regularly leads tours for college students, reporters, and other interested parties, showing them first-hand what these sites look, smell, and sound like.
While most of us have heard of fracking, few of us have seen it in action or how it has changed communities. The tours that Bill provides allow students and the like to experience in person what this kind of extraction means for the environment and for the residents who live near it.
Biking to Support FracTracker and Bill Hughes
Dave Weyant at the start of his cross-country Pedal for the Planet bike trip
In the classic spirit of non-profit organizations, we work in partnership with others whenever possible. Right now, as you read this posting, another extraordinary Friend of FracTracker, Dave Weyant (a high school teacher in San Mateo, CA), is finishing his cross-country cycling tour – from Virginia to Oregon in 70 days.
Dave believes strongly in the power of teaching to reach the hearts of students and shape their thinking about complicated issues. As such, he has dedicated his journey to raising money for FracTracker. He set up a GoFundMe campaign in conjunction with his epic adventure, and he will donate whatever he raises toward Bill’s educational tours.
Help us celebrate Dave Weyant’s courage, vision, and generosity – and support Bill Hughes’s tireless efforts to open eyes, evoke awareness, and foster communication about fracking – by visiting Dave’s GoFundMe page and making a donation. Every gift of any size is most welcome and deeply appreciated.
100% of the funds raised from this campaign will go to support Bill’s oil and gas tours in West Virginia. FracTracker Alliance is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Your contribution is tax deductible.
And to those of you who have already donated, thank you very much for your support!
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Hughes-Tour-Feature.jpg400900Guest Authorhttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngGuest Author2016-07-27 10:30:012020-03-11 16:48:40A Cross-Country Ride to Support Oil and Gas Tours in West Virginia
As part of FracTracker’s staff spotlight series, learn more about Matthew Kelso and why he works with FracTracker Alliance to analyze data from the oil and gas industry.
Time with FracTracker: I’ve been working with FracTracker since June 2010, when it was still a part of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities (CHEC) at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health.
Nickname: Matt
Education: Humboldt State University
Office Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Title: Manager of Data and Technology
What do you actually do in that role?
I make oil and gas data more accessible and more digestible to the general public. Largely, this is accomplished by converting spreadsheets into maps and charts to see what stories are hidden in the data. I’ve found that many people have an easier time processing impacts visually, so seeing a map with wells and violations in areas that they are familiar with will have a different effect on them than reading the same data in a huge spreadsheet that was downloaded from some regulatory agency or another.
I also work with other nonprofits to help them with their data and mapping needs.
Previous Position and Organization
As mentioned above, I worked for the University of Pittsburgh from 2010 to 2012, when FracTracker was a program at CHEC. Before that, I’ve worked as an archaeologist in the Southwest, a casino auditor, and an AmeriCorps member.
How did you first get involved working on oil and gas issues / fracking?
Environmental consciousness is something that has evolved over time for me. My family moved to Pittsburgh when I was a kid at a time when the city was busy sandblasting the soot off of iconic buildings and other landmarks all over town that had been left by over a century of steelmaking and other heavy industry. Then, I went to college in California at a time when Julia “Butterfly” Hill lived in an old-growth redwood for two years to protect it from being cut down. As an archaeologist, I spent my days looking for evidence of how people from a previous time had interacted with the environment around them. But my interest in oil and gas issues in particular really began by watching the footage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on TV, then coming to the realization that similar – if smaller – spills and contamination events were happening all over the place.
What is one of the most impactful projects that you have been involved in with FracTracker?
To my way of thinking, the true impact of the FracTracker Alliance is varied and cumulative, much in the way that oil and gas development itself impacts people’s lives. It is useful for people to hear that a pipeline leak in Santa Barbara, an oil train explosion in Lac-Mégantic, deforestation due to sand mine development in Wisconsin, well explosions in North Dakota, ground water contamination in Pennsylvania, and pipeline operators taking land away from people using eminent domain in Texas are all phenomena related to oil and gas extraction. Even though they may be dealing with a variety of issues at the local level, the impacts of development are widespread, and one of FracTracker’s biggest impacts is reminding people of the interconnected nature of the industry.
If I were to choose just one project that I was involved in, however, I would have to say the analysis of people living within a half-mile of train tracks in Pennsylvania that we did with PennEnvironment. The project really brought into focus the damage that oil trains could incur if they happen to explode in densely populated regions throughout the state.
Brook Lenker, Matt Kelso, and intern Gianna Calisto counting oil trains as they passed through Pittsburgh, PA
Feature image: Matt Kelso and colleagues prior to Senate meeting in Argentina
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Matthew-Kelso-Feature.jpg400900FracTracker Alliancehttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngFracTracker Alliance2016-06-29 14:42:192020-03-20 18:41:33Staff Spotlight: Matthew Kelso
As part of our staff spotlight series, learn more about Kyle Ferrar and why he works with FracTracker Alliance to conduct and communicate research on the public health impacts associated with the oil and gas / fossil fuel industry.
Time with FracTracker: I’ve been working with FracTracker since its inception in 2010, and started as an official staff member in July, 2014.
Nickname: Ky
Education: BS from the University of Pittsburgh; and MPH from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, where I am currently a DrPH candidate.
Office Location: I have an office in downtown Oakland, CA.
Title: Western Program Coordinator
What do you actually do in that role?
My major role as the Western Program Coordinator consists of a variety of responsibilities of operating a FracTracker Alliance branch office. In addition to the contributions of analyses and research that is documented on FracTracker’s California (and other western states’) page, my activities include fundraising, community outreach, and acting as an expert adviser on public health impacts for policy makers, regulators, other research institutions, at conferences, and directly to the public.
Kyle Ferrar (right) taking water samples
Previous Position and Organization
My previous research as a staff member with the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities (CHEC) at the University of Pittsburgh focused on public health impacts from various sectors of the fossil fuel industry, including Marcellus Shale development. In the picture to the right, you can see a CHEC colleague and I collecting water samples from the Allegheny River, next to a coal fired power plant.
How did you first get involved working on oil and gas issues / fracking?
As a steward to my local environment in Southwestern Pennsylvania, I was alerted of the concerns many residents were feeling as a result of the rapid increase of industrial presence in rural Pennsylvania resulting from Marcellus Shale natural gas extraction. The connections our CHEC had made in the past using community based participatory research methods to address and study other sources of environmental degradation were a vital resource for understanding what was really happening – on the ground.
What is one of the most impactful projects that you have been involved in with FracTracker?
The majority of my time is spent working on my computer, and cleaning and massaging datasets in spreadsheets. This is necessary and important, but incredibly tedious and far-removed. One project in 2015 that started this way, as most do, became much more personal. Working with a group called Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment, we identified the fact that Hispanic students and other students of color are more likely to attend schools near active oil and gas wells than white students. This was also true for hydraulically fractured (stimulated) oil and gas wells. Now, no student should have to go to school near this type of activity, but California does not have minimum setback requirements for schools or any other sensitive sites.
Meeting and working with the families of the students – and the students themselves that attend schools in the midst of the oil and gas wastelands – drives me to continue working for a future free from the fossil-fuel industry. No child should have to go to school near oil and gas fields to get an education. And as is typically the case, non-white and Hispanic communities in California bear the heaviest burden.
Check back soon to read the analysis described above. It will be the focus of my next blog piece.
Feature Image: Kyle Ferrar (left) with colleagues from CRPE
My interests include topics such as environmental justice, ecosystem services, watershed resilience, and landscape alteration(s). My work here at FracTracker focuses on the Food, Energy, and Water (FEW) nexus as it relates to hydraulic fracturing and related oil & gas activities/infrastructure with a focus on waste, watershed resilience and freshwater demand, and land-use change.
Previous Position and Organization
2011-2012 Vacant Land Repurposing (VLR) Postdoc, Cleveland Botanical Garden
2012- Present Adjunct Faculty, Cleveland State University, Teaching Intro Environmental Science and Geology, Soil Ecology
How did you first get involved working on oil and gas issues/fracking?
I had experienced the environmental and socioeconomic costs of fossil fuel extraction while I was a graduate student at Virginia Tech researching strip-mine/mountain top removal reclamation best practices as part of the Jim Burger’s Powell River Project. However, it wasn’t until I moved to Ohio in 2011 that I began to become aware of similar issues associated with high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF). I began to notice that there are many parallels between the techniques and how they alter communities, the landscape, and watersheds. Thus, when I found out about the chance to join the FracTracker team here in Ohio I saw that it was an opportunity I could not pass up.
What is one of the most impactful projects that you have been involved in with FracTracker?
The projects I am most proud in my capacity here at FracTracker would be our research into the effects of HVHF freshwater demand on the resilience/security of the Muskingum River Watershed in eastern Ohio and our work shedding light on the effects of frac sand mining across several Midwestern states. The latter topic is poorly understood on many levels, and we hope that our work has/will highlight the gaps in understanding and potential research opportunities.
Kirk Jalbert, FracTracker’s Manager of Community Based Research & Engagement, interviews Therese Vick, one of FracTracker’s 2015 Community Sentinels Award Winners.
Therese Vick is a highly-regarded community organizer with the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League in North Carolina. A big part of her work is serving BREDL chapters in Stokes, Anson, Lee, and Chatham counties – all frontline communities threatened by shale gas extraction. In these communities, she offers organizing assistance, training programs, and strategic campaign planning for local groups. Watch-dogging state regulatory agencies is also a significant part of Therese’s work, about which she publishes extensively on in her blog, From Where I Sit: Reports From The North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission Meetings. Therese lives in Raleigh, NC, with her cats Savannah and Charity, and a very opinionated bunny named Stella.
Q: To start, can tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you to the world of environmental advocacy work?
Therese: Well, I actually started out in a small town in Eastern North Carolina, working at a pharmacy. This was back in the very early ‘90s and a proposal for the world’s second largest hazardous waste incinerator landed on our county about six miles from my home. And this is a county that had no hospital. We had a volunteer fire department, but we had no haz-mat, none of that kind of infrastructure. That’s how I got involved in grassroots environmental work. I was a volunteer for years. Then I came on staff with Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL) and was supported by a local organization – the North Hampton Citizens Against Pollution -through a small grant. I left my job at the drug store after about 15 years and went to work on a bunch of different issues, not just the hazardous waste incinerator, which we eventually defeated. I worked with BREDL for about three and a half years, then went back to work with my husband in his business and raised my kids but stayed active with local community groups off and on. I came here to the Triangle to complete my education in psychology and human services. I called the executive director of BREDL to let them know I was living here in Raleigh; I knew that they came to Raleigh sometimes. They offered me a job, I graduated, and I came back to work for BREDL. So that’s kind of how I ended up where I am right now. I have been volunteering and working on grassroots environmental issues for over 20 years.
Q: Now that you are back with Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, what sorts of projects have you been working on?
A: It can change from one day to the next, but my biggest areas of work are on fracking, of course, disposal of coal ash, and air quality in particular. I’m also working on pipelines. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is proposed to go through North Carolina. My co-worker and I are working with communities opposing that. And we work on myriads of other issues. We are community organizers, but we not only doing the organizing, we do a lot of research and technical assistance and watchdog regulatory agencies and things like that as well. That is another big part of my job, is public records and investigations and things like that.
Q: You also do a lot to communicate your findings to the public by way of your blog, From Where I Sit. How do you think that work has made a difference in helping community to understanding the political landscape of gas development?
A: How that blog came about was, I was attending many, many meetings. I can’t even tell you how many, I would say 100 meetings of the Mining and Energy Commission and their various committees, which were very hard to sit through and very frustrating. I wrote this really sarcastic report to our executive director and it was kind of funny too. He said, you know what, you need to start writing a blog before you lose your mind. So that is where it started. It was fun, but also serious. It’s a good organizing tool. In the court of public opinion, it is a good tool for communities to use and to let the general public know that this is something good we are doing for the community, for our community. I mean, it’s something that has to be done because we are just not being protected like we should be. And I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Fighting for Government Transparency
Q: How has all of this work that you are involved in shaped your feelings on the importance of making information and data available to the public?
A: Back in the ‘90s there were these proponents of the incinerator who were very assertive about how we needed the incinerator and how it was going to help the state and all of this stuff. People just had never known them to be active politically so they knew something was going on – all the proponents said, “oh we have nothing to gain from this, nothing. We just think it’s a good idea and blah, blah, blah.” So when I went to the state to do a file search, the first one I had ever done, nervous as I could be, and I found three options from three of the biggest proponent land owners with the company – they were selling their land to the company for the hazardous waste incinerator. Nobody knew this. And I so I paid my 25 cents a page, copied them, and hurried back home from Raleigh to the little town I lived. Long story short, it was a really big story. It was a statewide story and I got some threats, some anonymous threats, and I had a lawyer that call me saying I had no right to those documents. I ended up hanging up on him. Anyway, that kind of got me hooked on the power of having information.
Q: Have you found a similar sense of importance in working with oil and gas related data? I know, for instance, you have done a lot of writing about Halliburton having deep political ties in your area.
A: Well the Halliburton one, Greenpeace did some reporting on that piece and it got national attention. Most of the Mining and Energy Commission stuff is pretty mundane, but this one commissioner was not careful. I requested specific information about if they had met with certain individuals—all the commissioners, it was a request to all the commissioners. I wanted calendar entries and all that stuff. It took them a little bit to get me the information. But then this one commissioner he had it all in a folder that was marked Halliburton. I was stunned. There was this guy, Bowen Health, and he was a registered lobbyist for Halliburton. And this Commissioner, George Howard, he was on the Mining and Energy Commission. He had this folder marked Halliburton. Now, compared to other places of the country we had a pretty strong chemical disclosure law. And Halliburton essentially nixed that. They got that backed up. But this commissioner, he had a calendar entry on December 5th, 2012, from 5:30-6:00pm, there with Bowen Health, the Halliburton lobbyist. All of the commissioners had just maintained, over and over and over again, “We haven’t had any contact with Halliburton.” That is what led me to request the records and there it was, just in black and white. And, I tell you what, it made some of them really mad at him.
Q: What would you say, at this point, is the biggest challenge moving forward with this work?
A: I think the current anti-regulatory frenzy at the state level, the lack of care and concern for public health and the environment at the state level, and the rush to exploit oil and gas in North Carolina at any cost. Those would be the three biggest challenges you have to battle every single day. You’ve got the same philosophy at the head of the environmental agency that you have in the governor’s mansion and in the legislature. People that don’t—at least say they don’t—believe in climate change. People that think that fracking is fine. People that think that offshore drilling is great. Conservative folks, and I’m not political, but that’s one thing that kind of astounded me at the beginning of this. Forced pooling is legal in North Carolina, and it has been since the ‘40s. The fact that people who consider themselves believers in personal and private property rights support, or don’t repeal, that law just was stunning to me. I’m seeing the same thing with imminent domain and the pipelines. So the fact that all this stuff can be ignored, and with the legislature, the governor, and the Department Environment and Natural Resources having that same philosophy, makes it difficult, but not impossible.
Q: So how do you overcome the challenges of anti-disclosure and anti-regulatory sentiments?
A: You have to continue to try to expose what is going on. And, actually, I have got a huge request that I have been going through on coal ash that has some of what I was just telling you about. You have to expose what is going on to educate the public. You have to develop strategic plans within the bigger organization and at the community level, because you just have to be prepared for whatever comes next. And working at the grassroots is the most important thing – folks working in local communities with their local governments, that is the most important thing.
Q: If there was one thing that you would communicate to people or groups that are getting off the ground to deal with similar problems in other parts of the country, what would you say to those individuals?
A: We only have to last one day longer than they do. In other words, don’t give up. If you need to take a little break then take a break, but try to celebrate along the way because it’s hard work. It’s very, very hard work and it can be very depressing and stressful, especially when you are living in a targeted community or you are living with a problem. Try to have fun when you can find it.
Q: Is there anything else that you would like to mention that is important to you personally?
A: I just wanted to say – about the Community Sentinel Award – I wanted to lift up the communities that I work with. Over time they become friends, and they are the heroes. They are the heroes, and I couldn’t do the kind of work that I do without them.
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Photos-Feature.png400900FracTracker Alliancehttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngFracTracker Alliance2016-02-05 15:09:352020-03-12 13:33:25Interview with Therese Vick – Sentinel Award Winner
Whether you are coming to our website for the first time or are a regular consumer of our work, we hope our maps, data, stories, and photos are informative, insightful, and, occasionally, inspiring.
As 2015 closes, extraction impacts continue. While drilling has slowed in many areas, pipeline construction has accelerated and oil trains roll through our cities posing excruciating risk. Our activities – and those of the many brave groups fighting to protect their communities – remain critical. The urgency is amplified by the dire state of our climate and oceans, symptoms of fossil fuel dependency. FracTracker’s crucial role is to examine the exhaustive footprint and effects of extraction while illuminating better paths forward.
Our last name is Alliance – a word that can be defined as ‘pact.’ Our pact is with the people whose lives have been turned upside down and the advocates working nonstop for a sustainable future. It’s an Alliance for everyone who cherishes the common home we call Earth.
At this reflective time of year, we are thankful for all who take the time to learn about these heavy issues and exercise their concern. We’re grateful for cooperation and collegiality that strengthen our collective impact. We deeply appreciate the foundations and individuals who support us and enable our work, including the many patrons who attended our first-ever film night and fundraiser in September. At that event, we celebrated environmental heroes receiving community sentinel awards for their stewardship. What a difference committed people can make!
At this giving time of year, we ask you to consider a year-end contribution to the FracTracker Alliance. We ask this humbly, as we know there are many causes worthy of your support, including our sister organizations also addressing the energy and climate challenge. Every dollar helps so please give what you can, but do so knowing that your gift will be used smartly in service of our noble mission.
Kirk Jalbert, FracTracker’s Manager of Community Based Research & Engagement, interviews Craig Stevens, one of FracTracker’s 2015 Community Sentinels Award Winners.
Craig Stevens (on right) with actor Mark Ruffalo
Craig Stevens is a 6th generation landowner from Silver Lake Township in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. Craig and his neighbors have experienced first-hand the truck traffic, noise, air pollution, and water contamination issues that often accompany shale gas extraction. Beginning in 2011 Craig began arranging tours of Susquehanna Co. to share affected residents’ stories with the press. This work has attracted citizens, journalists, elected officials, and celebrities from all over the world who now see Susquehanna Co. as an example of what could happen in their own backyards. We spoke with Craig about his work.
Q: Perhaps we can start by telling the readers your story, how you come back to Pennsylvania and how this led to your advocacy work related to oil and gas development?
Craig: Well, I was born in California in 1960, lived there for 46 years. Then my dad got sick in 2006; he was diagnosed with terminal esophageal cancer. My brother and sister and I ended up inheriting the ancestral 115-acre property. I had visited there my whole life, every couple of years, but I knew nothing about oil and gas or coal or any extraction methods and pretty much grew up at the beach in Southern California. Nobody in the family wanted to keep the family property, so I moved up here in January of 2010. The first thing I did was to check the deed to make sure that it had been transferred to our names. That’s when I found a gas lease for the property. On my father’s deathbed, he told us not to have anything to do with the industry, that he had refused to sign a lease. But then I did my research and found out Chesapeake Energy had signed my 95 year old grandmother, who was living in a nursing home, to a ten year oil and gas lease. My grandmother was a tenant but did not own the property. In Pennsylvania, and many other states, you can’t transfer mineral rights to anybody that’s a life tenant because that is part of a real estate deal. But they did it, they recorded it on our deed, tying up all of our mineral rights and giving it to Chesapeake Energy.
The second thing that got me fired up was when I was riding my three-wheeler and found a company had staked out a half-mile area right down the middle of our property. They were looking to put in a 16-inch pipeline without our permission or knowledge. So I pulled all the stakes out, went into town, and found the company. They right there offered me money. They said, well, we are going to put this in and we appreciate it if your family signed up, because we need to get this gas to market. After I refused their offer they told me all my neighbors had signed along the route already and I was going to be holding things up. Then they said, the state wants us here and they are going to give us Certificate of Public Convenience, so we are going to take your property either way. So that was my introduction to the gas industry.
Q: You have said in the past that we need to think about how we deal with shale gas extraction’s impacts as a matter of helping each other deal with civil and human rights abuses. Can you explain what you mean by that?
A: I was raised always to think globally, but act locally. Because everything that happens in our lives happens in our backyard and that is where things go. I was very politically active from a young age. My father got us all politically active. My older brother and my younger sister, at 10 years old, 8 years old, we were going to city council meetings and town council and county commission meetings, just because my dad was interested in what was going on in his community. Back then my neighbors in Dimock, PA, were having a problem. So I thought, I better find out what’s happening. Not only help them, because they are having a problem that doesn’t look like it’s resolved, but also to help prevent it from coming to Silver Lake Township. I always try to help people that are having a problem, especially with big people and bullies. So it was natural for me to stand with them and I started to tell my own story at the same time.
The Citizens’ Perspective
Q: Tell me about some of the projects you have been involved in that bring the public into shale gas debates. For instance, I know you organize regular tours of gas fields. Who attends these tours? What do you think they learn from visiting gas communities?
A: We’ve had 40 sitting assembly members and 8 state senators from New York State visit Susquehanna Co. We have had hundreds of mayors and town supervisors and country commissioners come and see first hand from a citizens’ perspective. We have had 60 countries come and send their public television stations. One of our tours was with Sean Lennon, Yoko Ono, Susan Sarandan, Arun Gandhi (Gandhi’s grandson) and Josh Fox. They had 35 journalists with them, including Rolling Stone. When they come we tell these people, also go take an industry tour, so they can see the other side. We encourage it because we don’t want them to think we are just bashing them and that they don’t get to defend themselves. Our thing was, if we highlight what is happening in our little neck of the woods then we could educate by showing the truth and affect the debate. Of course we were attacked viciously by the oil and gas industry, and by Energy in Depth, but also by the local elected officials that were pro-gas.
Q: This obviously requires a community effort. How have people and organizations in the area come together through these actions, and have they been able to develop more power by not just working as individuals?
A: Well here is the interesting thing. When I moved here, there were about 50 people that would show up at public meetings to discuss their first-hand experiences. These were people from Dimock, PA, and other surrounding areas. Besides that, there really was no collective organizing in Northeastern Pennsylvania. But we found that, by telling our stories, we brought the interest of organizations like New Yorkers Against Fracking and Mark Ruffalo’s group, Water Defense. They started to adopt us. I and other families started to travel all over, not only in New York but also in New Jersey and Ohio, to educate people. I realized that I was meant to take these stories further out. I took them to all these State Houses — North Carolina, Florida, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Ohio. In California I was allowed to go and sit with the Governor’s entire Cabinet in his executive office. I was very proud to go there since I grew up in California.
Q: In the bigger picture of protecting our environment, why do you think it’s important for concerned citizens to get involved in these kinds of activities?
A: I have four children who will not live on the same clean planet that I did; as dirty as we thought it was in the ‘60s and ‘70s when I grew up, this is going to make that look like the heyday of environmental cleanliness. I’m doing this because I really believe this is a generational suicide we’re experiencing. By not telling this story, I would be complicit. When people see the gas company’s commercials and hear the radio ads, it sounds like the truth because it’s coming from credible people. By facing up to these giants, and showing people that you can do it and win like in New York, that can start a grassroots fire all around the world. And that has happened if you look at what is happening in England and Poland and Spain and France and Germany. We are proud to be part of that movement.
Q: What would you say is the most valuable insight you have learned from working with people fighting the gas industry?
A: The most valuable lesson for me is that people power trumps corporate power. People sometimes just don’t realize that they have an inner strength – that an average person who knew nothing about this five and a half or six years ago can get involved and become leaders. I’m more excited today than ever. I went to Florida. They have some very bad chemical non-disclosure bills. Right now we have 15 counties and 35 cities in Florida that have passed resolutions for bans of fracking for oil or gas in Florida. Maryland is safe until October of 2017 because of their moratorium. So what we are doing is working. I try to remind people, and everyone out there should know this, that you are a federal citizen, the same you are a citizen of the state or Commonwealth or republic that you live in. You are protected constitutionally and legally as a federal taxpayer. So the federal government can’t just throw us to the wolves of these individual states. They have to act. If they don’t, then they need to step down and let somebody get in there that has the health and safety of their citizens at the top of their list of what they are supposed to be doing every day in their position of power.
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Stevens-Sentinel.jpg400900FracTracker Alliancehttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngFracTracker Alliance2015-12-11 12:35:542020-03-12 13:40:01Interview with Craig Stevens – Sentinel Award Winner
Kirk Jalbert, FracTracker’s Manager of Community Based Research & Engagement, interviews Dorina Hippauf, one of FracTracker’s 2015 Community Sentinels Award Winners.
Dorina Hippauf is the Chair of the Research Committee for the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition (GDAC) of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, and a contributing member of the Shale Justice Coalition. When a landman came knocking on her door in 2010, offering riches in exchange for a gas lease, Dory took the old saying of “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t” to heart. This was the starting point that led to her dedicated exploration of the industry’s practices and the creation of the Shale Players project, which now contains over 10,000 entries of who is connected to who in the industry. Dorina is one of three recipients of the 2015 FracTracker Community Sentinels Award. Here we talk with Dory about her work to connect the dots between board rooms, lobbyists, PR firms, astroturf organizations, and government agencies that promote the agendas of the gas industry.
Q: Dorina, perhaps we can begin by your telling me a bit about what brought you to advocacy work related to oil and gas development?
Dorina: What got me into the whole issue of gas drilling was, one, when I was driving to work, I would see flares on hillsides and I didn’t really understand what was going on. You know, there were big, large flames and my first thought was, something is on fire. Then I realized that from the way it was flaming, it was contained. But I still didn’t know what was going on. And then we had a land man come knock on our door and start offering us a lease. And we only have three quarters of an acre. Originally he was offering $1,000 an acre and when we said we only have three quarters of an acre, he dropped the price to $750. Everything just didn’t sound right. So I started doing some online investigating. I came across the GDAC, which is a local grassroots group in our area. I started attending meetings and I got involved from there.
The big driller here that was signing everybody up was Encana, which is of course based out of Canada. They did three test wells in our area. All three came up dry. Basically we are right at the edge of the productive end of the Marcellus Shale. Encana, shortly after they finished up the last test well, released everybody from their leases and left town in 2011. But I remained active with GDAC because I realized they have to get the gas to market. We’re located along the Transcontinental Pipeline, an ideal place for them to connect to gas hubs for gathering lines. So I knew the whole issue of gas drilling wasn’t going to be over with just Encana leaving our area.
Q: I know that one of the projects that you were instrumental in founding was the Shale Players project. Tell me more about that project, how it began, and what its status is presently?
A: I was at a GDAC meeting and somebody was talking about Encana and the question was asked, who is Encana? So I started Googling them and getting some information and this lead to other connections and I realized that just jotting things down on a piece of paper wasn’t going to give the whole picture. A lot of these companies are all interconnected one way or the other. I created this spreadsheet that grew into the Shale Players project. I have lists of the executives that work at these companies, the Board of Directors, politicians that are connected to them, other front groups, trade agencies, Astroturf, PR firms, and lobbying groups. It has grown to over 10,000 entries now.
Dorina explains Shale Players in her video “Connecting the Dots”
Q: How have you disseminated your findings and what are some of the results that you have seen come from this research?
A: Anyone who wants it, I give it to them. It’s also online on Google Docs. What I hope to do eventually is find someone that is able to put this into a format so it’s searchable online. So that when you type in somebody’s name or a company, it shows all of those connections. I update the online version every three or four months. As for what we’ve done with the results, the Public Accountability Initiative used it when they did their expose on Pennsylvania and gas drilling. Walter Brasch also cited a lot of my work in his book Fracking Pennsylvania. Other groups are using it because they go looking for information on a company that they may be dealing with.
Q: You also do a fair amount of blogging too, correct?
A: Yes, my blog is Frackorporation. When I blog, I usually try to show the connections to the genealogy of some of these organizations to give people a better idea of who they are really dealing with. So many people are looking for a single villain to blame. But it’s all interconnected. And that’s what I’m trying to show people, that this is more than just drilling and fracking and dealing with one company, it also extends to the whole issue of lobbying, the citizen united decision, and with unlimited donations to candidates. A lot of money gets passed around. Alec is involved, the Koch brothers are involved. A lot of big names.
Q: How do you think your work has made a difference in the public’s understanding of the political and economic landscape of the gas industry?
A: Well, to some extent, it discourages people because they see how large and involved it is. But on the other hand, it also makes them angry and they realize that you have to deal with this issue on a lot of different levels, both in terms of environmental impact, getting the community involved, and that its important to get involved politically. Also, it helps them to determine who to contact if they want to write a letter to a company. Too often we will just send it to the spokesperson who is just reading a script, but that is not whose attention you want to get. Also, the shareholders, they often don’t realize what the company is really doing. If you own one share of a company, you can go to their meetings and make a lot of noise.
Q: So this really is about building community and not just about collecting data. This relates to another project you are involved in called the Shale Justice Coalition. Can you tell me more about the Coalition?
A: The Shale Justice Coalition is a coalition of grassroots groups. Our overall objective is to stop the practice of fracking and to promote alternative energy as a better option. We have members in four or five in the states now as well as some from England and Ireland. Lots of information gets passed around as a result of the coalition — things that are going on in Ohio that we may not know about, things that are going on in New York — we try to share the information, get people interested and make them more aware of the bigger picture of the industry. Many of these groups will get a hold of me personally and ask me to write up a blog post about what is going on in their area. The media is not paying attention. With the Seneca Lake gas storage project there was some emails that were uncovered where Crestwood was telling its employees to boycott all businesses in the towns surrounding the lake that opposed the storage facility. Local groups had tried to get it to reporters who put it on the back burner and didn’t follow-up. I blogged about it, then it got picked up on social media, then the papers finally picked it up. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you have to rattle the cages.
Q: How has this work changed your perspective on the role of making information and data available to the public, in terms of making for better environmental protection?
A: It’s important to get this information out there, to make it readily accessible, easy for people to find and to use. I always thought when I first started this, that I could find one website where I could do a search on companies specifically for fracking and gas and oil drilling. But there wasn’t any. So in a way, with the Shale Players project, I’ve had to fill that niche. Also, a lot of the information I tend to find online I don’t know where they got their information. I take great pains to make sure whatever I put out there has the source link to it, so people can go and look for it themselves.
Q: So what is next for you Dory? What kind of new projects are you planning?
A: At the moment we are fighting the pipelines. I’ve been going around doing presentations at the request of organizations. Talking about what is going on with FERC and how the FERC process works. Letting people know what they need to be aware of the easement agreements and that they do have to negotiate. Just saying “no” to the easement and taking it to the point of imminent domain, if that is the course the company takes, isn’t enough. You have to show good faith and some attempt at negotiating an easement. Otherwise, when you go before the judge, he’s going to side with the company. Unfortunately, I think with these pipelines, unless we get more action from people, these pipelines are going to go through.
Truth-Out.org article by Dorina Hippauf and Ellen Cantarow
Q: Is there anything that you would communicate to other people and groups that are trying to get off the ground to deal with issues related to oil and gas?
A: Yes. One of the biggest things I keep hearing from people is that, when we have meetings or presentations or newspaper articles or whatever, we are only preaching to the choir. But what these groups have to realize is that the choir is growing. Every pipeline and every gas well sparks a new group of concerned people. So, the choir is growing and people are listening. It does get discouraging. It feels like you are losing at Whack-a-Mole. You are not going to get your cookies right now. And there is no one magic bullet that is going to fix everything. You have to deal with FERC, you have to deal with DEP, you have to deal with the government agencies that are involved. You have to consider who your legislators are. And you just can’t get discouraged. Take a break, stay off the computer for a week, recharge your batteries, and get back into it. You are in it for the long haul and you have to be able to make that commitment.
Q: Do you have any concluding thoughts for our readers?
A: People need to get local and be vocal. Tip O’Neil said, all politics are local and that is where it’s going to start. It’s like that movie, Groundswell. That’s grassroots. It starts from the bottom up to make real change. You can’t look at the federal government to fix it for you and the state government isn’t going to fix it either. You have to start locally and building the momentum there. And don’t give up.
https://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Fracking-Most-Wanted-Feature1.jpg400900FracTracker Alliancehttps://www.fractracker.org/a5ej20sjfwe/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021-FracTracker-logo-horizontal.pngFracTracker Alliance2015-10-19 15:47:092020-03-12 13:45:26Interview with Dorina Hippauf – Sentinel Award Winner
