History Looks to be Repeating Itself in Light of New Boom
Morgantown Dominion Post
12 September 2010
Guest Commentary
By Betty L. Wiley
Today we are beginning to experience a new extractive industry boom,
the production of gas from deep shales. The Marcellus is the one
presently undergoing most of the production activity. It’s just the
beginning. In fact, only two Marcellus wells have been permitted in
Monongalia County to date.
This is the lull before the storm. Many of us can perceive that we are
going to see the alteration of something we value deeply ... that is,
the aesthetic quality of living in green, quiet Appalachia. Many of us
are already seeing it. My point of view is from Monongalia County; but
Pennsylvania to the north and Wetzel County to the west are seamlessly
joined despite political boundaries. Chaos reigns in some places.
People fight to preserve peace and quiet, water and air.
The bad and good thing is, all these lucrative extractive industries
provide jobs. In this area, coal mining is big.
Now gas production. The worst thing is that regulations are inadequate
to protect the environment, and the technology has evolved into
something extreme in order to reach extreme lengths to extract the gas.
But regulations are not extreme. They are puny.
In the past few decades there are people who have moved into our woods
and hollows and breathed a sigh of relief that at last they’d found it,
a place of sunwarmed, tree-breathed air, clear water streams and
birdsong.
It seemed that here was something pristine ... but only if you didn’t
know its history.
A hundred years ago there was an oil boom, hundreds of oil wells, teams
of horses pulling pipe into the oilfields, hotels and boarding houses
built on ridgetops, and little towns springing up overnight. There were
accidents and flares, pollution, etc. Farmers got rich from royalties,
their cows grazing beside oil rigs, their lives changing overnight.
The region, including Monongalia County, had hundreds of oil rigs with
big onecylinder engines. Crude and gas were pumped for decades. We
lived on W.Va. 7 West; there was a 60-foot rig beside the highway maybe
50 yards from our house, basically in our front yard.
An older photo shows two others out in the nearby field. Standing in
our yard, you could see three or four more rigs on the surrounding
hills, one on Browns Hill, part of what later became Mason-Dixon
Historical Park. It was like that wherever you drove up W.Va. 7 — it
was a game to count how many rigs you could see at one time.
They are all gone now. (There is one I know of, near Shamrock, where
Dunkard Creek is formed by the confluence of West Virginia’s and
Pennsylvania’s forks.) These were all metal rigs; the older ones were
built of wood.
As we grew up, the big throb and “spat” of the hit-and-miss engine was
a common refrain. Our Pentress neighbor, Downey Liming, pumped the well
once a week. When the rig was not pumping, we played in the belthouse,
on the oiled drilling deck by the big bullwheels, and went along the
belt to the engine house.
The bottoms of our bare feet were black with oily dust. Sometimes we’d
get a splinter from the rough deck. The well was abandoned years ago,
all the trappings of industry — great heavy metal engine, wheels, and
derrick — removed for salvage. The well casing was still there, a metal
cap on top.
But the well was not plugged until 2009, by the state. Over the years
the ground had caved in around the casing until there was a hole as big
as a Volkswagen and nobody knows how deep, but at least hundreds of
feet. After numerous attempts at phone calls, I finally took photos and
wrote a letter, and soon the well was plugged. There are many abandoned
wells needing plugged. They (the state) prioritize by how hazardous and
how public the situation is. Thirty feet from a main highway, a large
open shaft was finally noticed.
Years ago, there was a newspaper article about a family that went berry
picking and their young son, who was saved by his berries; he stepped
into an unplugged well, fell, and was holding his arms out with buckets
of berries.
That’s what kept him from falling a couple of thousand feet into the
well.
Norma Jean Venable wrote a book, “Dunkard Ridge,” in 1979, about the
adventure of moving into an old decrepit farmhouse on Dunkard Ridge,
where the oil boom had once dominated. She writes about the history she
learned from a local man.
“Glycerine wagons carried the explosive to the wells. This was an
extremely hazardous trade because the glycerine was carried in a liquid
state on wagons that bounced over the rough roads. Most members of this
‘profession’ died young. One man and his wagon blew to bits and the
only thing that ever was found were two shoes from his mules that were
embedded in a barn a long distance from where the wagon blew up.” The
book is a collection of anecdotes and nostalgia. The new gas boom, with
its huge well sites and machinery, its huge appetite for water and
chemicals, may have a more ominous impact.
BETTY L. WILEY is a former Monongalia County Commissioner. [and an UMRA
Board member] She lives in Westover. This commentary should be
considered another point of view and not necessarily the opinion or
editorial policy of The Dominion Post.