Cheri Campbell sends this picture from back home in Ormsby, Pennsylvania, part of Keating Township. The sign reads: “This road is being rebuilt, paved and designed using green technology. All funding is provided by Chesapeake Energy.”
Chesapeake Energy has been fracking for natural gas in Pennsylvania, not without trouble. Campbell, a librarian, also sends the state notice about the paving work, for 2.5 miles. She says that would cover the distance between Chesapeake Energy’s leases on the 10-mile-or-so road. You could see the story as fracking making the roads better, or you could see it as fracking overwhelming the roads.
That kind on-the-one-hand, on-the other calculation is a lot of how the industry seems to work.
Across the border in Ohio, Governor John Kasich has made a habit of saying a single company could blast $1 trillion in oil and gas from the shale underground in his state — an estimate the AP calls “exorbitant.” On a much smaller scale, very poor Youngstown, Ohio, has had trouble paying for the paving of its streets. But the state is sending over money to fix the roadway used as an entrance by a fracking company, which, by the way, is promising to bring more than 100 jobs to Youngstown. Youngstown is one of many places in the U.S. to report earthquakes near wells where companies have pumped fracking wastewater back into the ground, and it’s one of the places considering an outright ban on fracking.
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