By Cris McConkey. On January 14, 2011, I traveled to Laporte, Pa to document a forum entitled “The Cumulative Environmental Effects of Gas Drilling” with Penn State Geologist Terry Engelder, who fame or notoriety was his estimate of vast reserves of recoverable gas in the Marcellus shale, and Cornell Civil Engineer Tony Ingraffea, who as an expert on fracture mechanics and who previously worker for Slumburger. ;Sponsored by Protect Eagles Mere Alliance and Responsible Drilling Alliance, this was a much anticipated event as Engelder and Ingraffea had previously been academic collaborators but now stand on opposite sides of the fracking controversy. I, however, was intrigued by the location on Route 42 in the Endless Mountains, and proximity to Eagles Mere Park and Lake.
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The Getting it right for Eaglesmere by Cris McConkey, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
I certainly wouldn’t want to see any of our natural beauty ruined. I live in Sullivan County all year, I was born here, I’ve never been away from this place for longer than a week in my whole life. When I did go, I missed it, the rural, countryside charm isn’t something you can buy or experience elsewhere. But the folks who only reside here from Memorial Day to Labor Day, I tend not to see their opinion. The tourist industry doesn’t greatly affect every community, the county isn’t set up to be centered on tourism. There’s no place for them to stay, and unless they’re into the outdoors, there is nothing for them to do. The unfortunate fact, is that we have a rich history and culture that is specifically centered around what the land can provide for mankind. The land was stripped of trees for the first settlers, then it was stripped of coal for the next boom of settlers. The tanning and lumber industries left waste and scar on the landscape that can never be fixed. Even now, more than a century after the lumber industry died, if you know what to look for, you can see the scars. The semi-anthracite industry left scars that will never be erased. The water table, streams, bodies of water and land are impacted everyday, and will be forever. But these industries shaped Sullivan County. I’m sorry, it’s not all about Eagles Mere, it’s what is right for the citizens and families whose families settled here long before Eagles Mere existed. Some of my family came here in 1829; and some of them came in the mid 18th century, some were revolutionary war veterans. You can plant a row of trees in front of a gas well head. You can’t dig up and fill in all the mine slopes, that could collapse at any moment, and you have no idea where they’re all at. There is 100 some acres of rolling green fields, we suffered years of stench to make them reclaimed mine lands. That can never be used by the public, it’s unsafe, and prone to subsidence. Eagles Mere clearly doesn’t see the dying economy around them, they’re only concerned about their summer cottages and golf.
As both filmmaker and webmaster, I question whether you actually watched this video. When you left your comment, the video was not viewable. That is because of an issue with a recent theme update that is slowly being resolved for older posts such as this one. Possibly, you downloaded the movie, but since you didn’t refer to anything that was stated in the movie, I don’t believe you did watch it. You write:
Had you watched it, you would know from the very start that “Eaglesmere is a community that began in the late 1800′s…”. You have no comment on what anyone said in this movie, including George Jenkins, a landowner and board member of Trout Unlimited, or the debate between Engelder and Ingraffea. You didn’t watch the parts about the building of the Toboggan slide, or the scenes at the Inn at Eaglesmere, which contradict your assertion that there is nothing for tourists to do here. Your comment has all the markings of the type of comment that someone working for Energy in Depth, i.e. the gas industry, would leave on a blog.