Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America

The foundation of Stacey’s house cracked. Vibrations rutted the road with industrial-strength potholes that punctured nine tires on her gold Pontiac G6 and cracked a rim. In her deepening ire, she wasn’t alone; in Amity, and all over the drilling epicenter of Western Pennsylvania, the weight and number of trucks destroyed bridges and roads, imperil

The unknown realities of drilling for shale gas seemed preferable to the familiar toll coal mining levied.

Beth and Stacey didn’t know that some companies avoided using the shoddy ponds, nor did they know the potential health effects of hydrogen sulfide gas. According to Beth, the DEP told her only that hydrogen sulfide was naturally occurring.

From its beginnings, however, the conservation ethic was sharply curtailed by the coal industry.

Why was the EPA willing to move on Flint and not in Washington County? The difference was public versus private water. If there had been forty houses below that leaking pond, and if Stacey, Beth, and Buzz relied on public water, which, unlike their private wells, was subject to regulation, then they’d have a winning criminal case.

It was the only time in U.S. history that a sitting president led troops against his own citizens.

Each spring, this anti-federalist spirit flourishes in downtown Washington, where Whiskey Rebellion reenactors march beneath the uneasy gaze of George Washington, whose statue still perches atop the county courthouse.

Section 27, an obscure amendment to the state constitution, Pennsylvania had guaranteed its citizens the right to clean air and pure water and to the commonly held assets of public natural resources. Pennsylvania was one of only three states in the nation to enshrine such environmental rights in its Bill of Rights.

It has also brought with it the promise of energy independence and injected much-needed cash into struggling places. Yet it has fractured communities, dividing those making money from those whose water, air, and health are threatened.