(PA) State's Laws Offer Little Shale Drilling Protection to
Archaeological Sites
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
8 May 2011
By David Templeton
An excavation at a Westmoreland County site once occupied by
Monongahela Indians produced abundant evidence of two villages and
allowed researchers to piece together the violent end of the later
settlement at the hand of invaders who sacked it, massacred its
inhabitants and burnt houses and food stores, said William C. Johnson,
who served as an adviser to the project.
But when Mr. Johnson returned to the dig site last year he was stunned
by what he found.
"There is a drill rig and catchment basin sitting on half the village,"
said Mr. Johnson, who received a doctoral degree from the University of
Pittsburgh and served as senior prehistoric archaeologist for Michael
Baker Jr. Engineering Inc. "You have something there -- which is better
than you get with [excavations of] other villages -- that has been
destroyed by drilling."
The Kirshner site near West Newton is one of a number of sites to be
damaged or destroyed by drilling, and those who have turned to state
officials seeking help in preserving them have found that
Pennsylvania's laws offer little or no protection for archaeological
resources.
The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the state agency
that oversees historic sites including areas of archaeological value,
has no power to compel investigation or preservation and no money to
conduct field investigations of sites that state law mandates it pay
for.
Mike Kotz, a Washington County vegetable grower with an interest in the
artifacts he encountered in his agricultural work, has sought to
protect sites of proven or potential value from destruction by natural
gas operations. Many other types of construction and industrial
activities can also damage cultural resources, but the rapid growth of
Marcellus Shale drilling means a big increase in road building,
drilling site work, construction of compressor stations, pipeline
laying and other activities associated with work in the vast rock
formation underlying much of Pennsylvania from which natural gas is
extracted through hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
"A bulldozer can destroy 9,000 years of history in 15 minutes," Mr.
Kotz said.
A construction site must be 10 acres or larger before the state History
Code, or Title 37, takes effect. Construction sites under 10 acres are
exempted, meaning there is no state oversight whatsoever on these
sites. Drill pads for Marcellus Shale sites are often under 10 acres.
But even for sites over 10 acres, legislation passed in 1995 requires
the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, rather than the
company or permit applicant, to pay for archaeological surveys or field
work under a tight 120-day deadline.
The Act 70 amendment gave the historical and museum commission new
responsibilities with no additional funding.
So the commission lacks sufficient resources to do any field
operations, commission spokesman Howard Pollman said, noting its role
nowadays involves issuing recommendations.
"We can't force anyone to do anything," he said. "We are only a
consulting party. We only give opinions."
The Department of Environmental Protection alerts the historical and
museum commission to do a site assessment for cultural resources if the
site is 10 or more acres, but does not base its permitting decisions on
the commission's findings. Other state agencies are not required to
seek commission advice on projects or follow its recommendations.
Jason Espino, a graduate student in applied archaeology at Indiana
University of Pennsylvania, is doing his master's thesis on gas
drilling's impact on more than 3,000 designated historic sites in
Washington County.
"People think archaeology is Egypt and Mexico, but we have
archaeological richness here, and it's being destroyed by unchecked
drilling for natural gas," said Mr. Espino, who is also president of
the Allegheny County Chapter of the Society for Pennsylvania
Archaeology. "We do not want to stop development, but we also do not
want to destroy the past. A healthy balance is what is proper here."
Mr. Espino said conventional gas-well drilling already has damaged the
Heathville Flats site in Jefferson County and the Runaway Run and
Fishbasket Forks sites in Armstrong County.
"It's shocking to see," he said. "This is a great example of
unnecessary destruction of a significant site."
On the Kirshner site, nothing prevented a drilling company from setting
up operations next to the site where Jay Babich, an amateur
archaeologist and member of the Westmoreland Archaeological Society, as
well as the Kirshner family who owned and lived at the site, had done
excavations. Mr. Babich did most of the work to uncover the remains of
overlapping villages that dated from 1190 and 1500 A.D. The
Archaeological Conservancy, a national nonprofit that acquires
archaeological sites to preserve them, now owns part of the land where
previous excavations had taken place.
The Monongahela Indian village extended onto the neighboring property
where well drilling occurred.
Mr. Kotz, who created the Pennsylvania Simply Sweet Onion, said he
remains determined to protect a site on land he previously leased north
of Claysville, where he recovered artifacts that a historical
commission archaeologist said range in date from 7500 B.C. to 1500 A.D.
The half-acre site, now owned by the state Game Commission, produced up
to 400 Native American points, often called arrowheads, along with
hundreds of pounds of hammer, grinding and nutting stones and grinding
surfaces and other artifacts. In a letter to Mr. Kotz, Mark A.
McConaughy, a historical commission official at the Bushy Run
Battlefield in the Harrison City section of Penn Township, identified
the point types in Mr. Kotz's collection and probable ages for the
artifacts.
He also encouraged Mr. Kotz to donate the collection to the State
Museum in Harrisburg.
The site now is listed on state archaeological survey maps (available
only to archaeologists to prevent looting). But being on that list
doesn't protect many properties from damage or destruction from
gas-well operations active in the area.
Some Pennsylvania sites have more protection: Projects involving
streams or waterways, or federal property, fall under the purview of
the federal History Code, which can require companies to do
archaeological surveys and field work before projects can proceed.
A Mark West Liberty Midstream & Resources LLC pipeline project
north of Claysville that Mr. Kotz believes is compromising
archaeological resources was subject to the stricter federal History
Code. Robert McHale, manager of environmental regulatory affairs for
Mark West, said his company not only is aware of its obligation to
preserve cultural resources but avoids such sites as a matter of good
business.
Under the federal code, the company was required to notify Army Corps
of Engineers officials if it encountered archaeological finds. To
prevent such delays, Mr. McHale said, an archaeologist under company
contract checks whether proposed pipeline routes and project plans
might disrupt any historic sites. If so, the company alters the routes
to avoid them.
"It's better to pre-screen than to wait until the last minute and get a
surprise," Mr. McHale said.
When artifacts were found at a Blaine Township site where Mark West had
proposed to create a wetlands, the company was required to preserve
those areas to comply with the federal History Code.
Mr. McHale and state officials met with Mr. Kotz in August 2009 to
discuss historic preservation, and everything was amicable, he said.
But Mr. Kotz said his suggestions were ignored.
Mark West built a compressor station in Blaine on a site designated as
historic, but Mr. McHale said the location of the archaeological
resources wasn't clear and findings were deemed to be minimal, so the
company went ahead with the project.
"What's at stake?" Mr. Espino said. "The cultural heritage of the
commonwealth is put in danger -- the campsites of the earliest
Americans."
Sacred grounds, burial mounds and prehistoric villages are at risk, he
said, along with archaeological evidence of how people made their
livings, buried their dead, built homes, grew maize (corn) and hunted
animals. French and Indian War sites and 18th-century domestic sites
also could be jeopardized, he said.
Construction, strip mining and conventional natural gas drilling
already have destroyed sites identified as significant in
archaeological surveys, Mr. Espino said, but the Marcellus Shale boom
with so many locations heightens the threat. Since 2005, Mr. Espino
said, well drilling statewide has affected 57,000 acres, or about 91
square miles. He speaks on the topic to raise public awareness with
hope of protecting sites.
The "pipe dream" solution, he said, is to repeal the Act 70 amendment
to force drilling companies once again to do surveys and pay for
preservation before projects begin, as the federal code requires. There
are no such initiatives under way in the state Legislature.
Mr. Kotz continues contacting state and elected officials and
environmentalists in hopes of preserving historic sites from drilling
activity. His only option, he said, is to ask natural gas companies to
shift drilling pads and pipelines to avoid destroying small but
important historic sites.
"In my case, it is common sense, really," he said. "Put the pipeline
over there, and not in a field where there is 9,000 years of history."