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Back where I started my career in eastern Utah, we had a name for oil and gas workers. We called them “field rats” and with good reason. We didn’t come up with the name — in fact I think it was a name workers came up with on their own. But it is certainly an applicable name and it embodied all the negative elements that came with the gas drilling industry.
The possibility of opening New York for natural gas drilling in the Marcellus shale is certainly cropping up as a hot-button issue. With Department of Environmental Conservation officials releasing drafts of both proposed regulations and statements on the environmental impacts, proponents and opponents are awaiting eagerly a round of public hearings and the next steps that will almost certainly results in expansion of current drilling operations north into New York.
It may take years for production to extend far enough north to impact communities in northern Steuben County and southern Livingston County. However, gas drilling is not foreign to the Dansville area. A quick search of DEC’s oil and gas database shows dozens of wells dating back a century or more that dot the area. What’s new is that the oil and gas industry has finally developed the technology to extract resources from areas previously thought untouchable.
Much of the hubbub rightly centers on the environmental impacts of drilling: the wellheads themselves, the hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines, compression stations and what to do with the hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic water that is used in the process.
The drilling of each well means hundreds, if not thousands, of trips with heavy equipment, often on roads that communities already struggle to maintain.
That alone is quite a debate. DEC appears to be making a good-faith effort to thoroughly evaluate and account for environmental impacts to roads, watersheds and natural resources.
What DEC is only briefly considering — if at all — are the larger social impacts that come with the drilling industry.
The good news of oil and gas is that it brings a robust economy with it. When production activities move into an area, many of the workers arrive with the drilling rigs from across the nation, from Texas to Montana and from Oregon to West Virginia. New population results in thriving businesses and many local jobs.
To house all the new workers, drilling companies buy or rent every open house, apartment or hotel room, decimating any tourism industry and driving up housing prices. When the companies run out of space or through loopholes in local laws, temporary work camps pop up near drilling sites.
Back where I started my career in eastern Utah, we had a name for oil and gas workers. We called them “field rats” and with good reason. We didn’t come up with the name — in fact I think it was a name workers came up with on their own. But it is certainly an applicable name and it embodied all the negative elements that came with the gas drilling industry.
The possibility of opening New York for natural gas drilling in the Marcellus shale is certainly cropping up as a hot-button issue. With Department of Environmental Conservation officials releasing drafts of both proposed regulations and statements on the environmental impacts, proponents and opponents are awaiting eagerly a round of public hearings and the next steps that will almost certainly results in expansion of current drilling operations north into New York.
It may take years for production to extend far enough north to impact communities in northern Steuben County and southern Livingston County. However, gas drilling is not foreign to the Dansville area. A quick search of DEC’s oil and gas database shows dozens of wells dating back a century or more that dot the area. What’s new is that the oil and gas industry has finally developed the technology to extract resources from areas previously thought untouchable.
Much of the hubbub rightly centers on the environmental impacts of drilling: the wellheads themselves, the hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines, compression stations and what to do with the hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic water that is used in the process.
The drilling of each well means hundreds, if not thousands, of trips with heavy equipment, often on roads that communities already struggle to maintain.
That alone is quite a debate. DEC appears to be making a good-faith effort to thoroughly evaluate and account for environmental impacts to roads, watersheds and natural resources.
What DEC is only briefly considering — if at all — are the larger social impacts that come with the drilling industry.
The good news of oil and gas is that it brings a robust economy with it. When production activities move into an area, many of the workers arrive with the drilling rigs from across the nation, from Texas to Montana and from Oregon to West Virginia. New population results in thriving businesses and many local jobs.
To house all the new workers, drilling companies buy or rent every open house, apartment or hotel room, decimating any tourism industry and driving up housing prices. When the companies run out of space or through loopholes in local laws, temporary work camps pop up near drilling sites.
Local workers fortunate enough to find a job with the gas companies live high on the hog with attractive wages and benefit packages. Everyone else sees their cost of living spike, with the elderly and disabled on fixed incomes among the hardest-hit groups.
A 2008 Associated Press story highlighted some of the problems among drilling field workers, including:
- A lack of English skills among the young, inexperienced workers.
- High job injury rates with frequent lapses in workplace safety and few penalties for violators.
- Frequent drug use, particularly methamphetamine, as workers struggle to get through 12-hour shifts for 14 days in a row.
That’s just the short list. With all the ills that drilling rig workers bring with them comes an added cost to small communities. Higher crime rates consume law enforcement resources, as do on-the-job injuries, heavy highway traffic and drug overdoses. Ambulance and fire department runs increase. Increased enrollment at schools fills classrooms to capacity and stretches the resources of local school districts.
The result is that local communities — already stressed with economic decline over several decades — are left picking up the tab for an industry that is known for its record-breaking profits.
The most common solution is to tax the industry. Tolls are placed on heavy gas field trucks for using local roads. Taxes and royalties are collected from extracted resources. Drilling companies make sizeable donations to schools, municipalities and non-profits.
Sooner or later — sometimes after just a few years and sometimes after a decade or two — the industry goes away. Amid a collapsed local economy, communities are left behind to deal with many of the costs that came with the industry, but didn’t leave with it.
For all the so-called good will and community support that drilling companies show, in the end, they are profit-driven machines. At the end of the day, the sole purpose of these corporations is to make as much money as possible. Time and time again, companies cut corners and push for higher production with lower costs.
They are not interested in the welfare of local communities and they are not interested in worker safety. When our communities are opened to the impacts of the energy industry, we must be prepared for the reality of what the industry’s impact will be.
Drilling and gas extraction is a boom-bust industry. Regulatory environments, market prices and demand all cause the industry to come and go, to thrive and decline until one day the gas is gone and the industry leaves for good.
The reality we must face is that DEC will allow drilling. Even with the strictest regulations, we can only hope that environmental catastrophes will be kept to a minimum. For all the regulation in the world, accidents will happen and rules will be broken. Natural resources will be contaminated and our lands forever scarred. Is that a price we are willing to pay? For all the good that can come with the economic booms, New Yorkers musk ask ourselves, are we ready to handle the social ills that come with it? What’s more, how are we preparing now for the inevitable bust? Or are we going to be like the rest of the country that lets the industry tear up our lands and destroy our communities in the name of profit?
It’s early enough in the process that we can make our own rules at a local level. In every community where gas extraction is a possibility, now is the time to look at these issues, before the drilling rigs arrive and before it’s too late.
