Anti-fracking Blockade in Moshannon State Forest

9th July 2012

Near­ly 100 Earth First! activists, friends and allies forced a 70-foot-tall EQT hydrofrack­ing drill rig to sus­pend oper­a­tions for 12 hours yes­ter­day in Pennsylvania’s Moshan­non State For­est. This is the first time that pro­test­ers have shut down a hydrofrack drilling oper­a­tion in the US. A tree sit­ter hung above the access road, with their anchor ropes block­ing it. A sec­ond per­son was also in a tree to sup­port the sit­ter while dozens of sup­port­ers guard­ed ten large debris piles that were across the road. Anoth­er group of 50 activists block­ad­ed the entrance to the access road. The State Police, with the Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion and Nat­ur­al Resources, dis­persed the block­ade around nine p.m. And removed the tree sit­ters with a lad­der truck. Three arrests were made for dis­or­der­ly con­duct, but pro­test­ers were cit­ed and released on-site.

There are a lim­it­ed num­ber of actu­al drill rigs in oper­a­tion in the state which are fer­ried around from site to site on a tight sched­ule. By halt­ing oper­a­tions for a day on this site, the block­ade has like­ly cre­at­ed a cost­ly dis­rup­tion for a hand­ful of wells in the area which EQT appar­ent­ly planned to drill in suc­ces­sion.

The activists report­ed that the police were reck­less with the sit­ters’ safe­ty, such as being quick to cut their anchor ropes.  The sup­port­ing sitter’s safe­ty and descent ropes were cut by the police as he climbed high­er in the tree.  The police in the lad­der truck had no radios and com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the ground was dif­fi­cult over the noise of the diesel engine; at one point the lad­der hit one of the sitter’s sup­port lines. Police were seen taunt­ing the sit­ter by wav­ing around one of their anchor lines and mak­ing jokes at them while shak­ing the ham­mock.

The site is part of a high con­cen­tra­tion of wells in Moshan­non State For­est, one of the most heav­i­ly drilled state forests in Penn­syl­va­nia. Over half of the forest’s 190,000 acres have been leased for Mar­cel­lus drilling using hydraulic frac­tur­ing. Despite wide­spread pub­lic oppo­si­tion, the for­mer PA sec­re­tary of Con­ser­va­tion and Nat­ur­al Resources pre­dicts 12,000 Mar­cel­lus wells will be drilled in state forests in the com­ing decade¹. A recent poll showed that the major­i­ty of Penn­syl­va­ni­ans are opposed to frack­ing on pub­lic lands².

Local farmer Jen­ny Lisak, whose own prop­er­ty has been impact­ed by frack­ing, describes the dev­as­ta­tion she has seen in the Moshan­non, “Hav­ing grown up enjoy­ing Moshan­non State For­est in so many ways, I am absolute­ly appalled at the ongo­ing destruc­tion. The once nar­row and invit­ing oak-shad­ed lanes are now being replaced by dust and traf­fic choked roads for chem­i­cal laden trucks – there are no words to describe the injus­tice of tak­ing pub­lic land, meant to pro­vide a source of beau­ty and wilder­ness for all and turn­ing it into an indus­tri­al zone.”

Drilling in the area has a trou­bled his­to­ry. In June 2010, a major blowout at anoth­er well in Clearfield Coun­ty spewed 35,000 gal­lons of tox­ic drilling waste into the Lit­tle Lau­rel Run water­shed and caused the evac­u­a­tion of Moshan­non State For­est³. Since 2008, only 24 of EQT’s 198 Mar­cel­lus wells in the state have been inspect­ed and vio­la­tions were found at every sin­gle inspec­tion. When they have been cit­ed, they’ve refused to change their prac­tices. On May 9, 2012, in Dun­can Town­ship, Tio­ga Coun­ty, EQT was cit­ed for faulty con­struc­tion on a flow­back water impound­ment; three weeks lat­er the pit failed, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing a near­by spring⁴.

“This is part of an esca­lat­ing direct action cam­paign against frack­ing in the Mar­cel­lus Shale region,” said Danielle Diet­t­er­ick, an activist affil­i­at­ed with Mar­cel­lus Earth First! from Ben­ton, Pa. “Peo­ple from all around the coun­try have joined with Penn­syl­va­nia res­i­dents to put their bod­ies on the line to stop frack­ing.”

The action comes on the heels of a 12-day block­ade to stop the dis­place­ment of the Riverdale Mobile Home Park, in Lycoming Coun­ty, and the shut­down of a frack­ing waste­water injec­tion well near Athens, Ohio. Groups across the coun­try are plan­ning more anti-extrac­tion inter­ven­tions like RAMPS in West Vir­ginia and the Tar Sands Block­ade in Texas, lat­er this month. All these inde­pen­dent, grass­roots-led actions show per­haps a coa­lesc­ing nation­al upris­ing against exploita­tive extrac­tion.

Susan Riley, anoth­er sup­port­er, cheered on the bold action, “The state gov­ern­ment has sold off our pub­lic lands and, with Act 13, stripped us of our rights to local self-gov­er­nance. The frack­ing indus­try has free reign in this state and no one’s gonna stop them unless we do.”

8th July 2012

Activists from Mar­cel­lus Earth First! have erect­ed a slash pile block­ade and two tree sits block­ing an access road to an EQT hydro-frack­ing site in Moshan­non State For­est in Clearfield Coun­ty, PA., halt­ing drilling oper­a­tions set to begin this week. The block­aders were joined by 40 sup­port­ers and con­cerned cit­i­zens, who turned around a Hal­libur­ton truck. The block­ade is try­ing to stop the fur­ther destruc­tion of Pennsylvania’s state forests—more than half of which have already been leased for drilling—and call atten­tion to the dev­as­tat­ing effects of hydrofrack­ing on the state’s com­mu­ni­ties. The sit­ters’ anchor lines are block­ing the road by cross­ing each oth­er and the road, and if an anchor line is cut a sit­ter will fall. This action has been coor­di­nat­ed as the post-Ren­dezvous action. Each Sum­mer Earth First!ers and allies come togeth­er to skill share, take part in dis­cus­sion work­shops, and keep it wild in our last remain­ing wilder­ness places in the US. Fol­low­ing a week in the woods, we take part in an action in sup­port of the local orga­niz­ers host­ing the camp out, also know as the Round Riv­er Ren­dezvous, or Rondy.

Today’s block­ade is the lat­est in a series of esca­lat­ing actions of resis­tance to the destruc­tive impacts of hydrofrack­ing in the Mar­cel­lus Shale. Last May, res­i­dents of But­ler Coun­ty occu­pied the office of State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bri­an Ellis, demand­ing account­abil­i­ty for wide­spread con­t­a­m­i­na­tion caused by hor­i­zon­tal drilling. In June, sev­en fam­i­lies, along with dozens of sup­port­ers, blocked the entrance to the Riverdale Mobile Home Com­mu­ni­ty to pre­vent their immi­nent evic­tion at the hands of Aqua Amer­i­ca PVR. Aqua sought to destroy their homes and con­struct a water with­draw­al facil­i­ty per­mit­ted to extract up to three mil­lion gal­lons of water from the Susque­han­na Riv­er dai­ly for use in frack­ing. Res­i­dents were able to main­tain the block­ade for 12 days. On June 17, 1,000 Ohioans stormed the state­house in Colum­bus and passed a “people’s res­o­lu­tion” ban­ning hydrofrack­ing. Most recent­ly, a 31-year-old landown­er from Athens Coun­ty, Ohio chained her­self to con­crete bar­rels and shut down oper­a­tions at one of Ohio’s 170 injec­tion wells, which con­tain about 95% of the tox­ic and radioac­tive frack­ing waste gen­er­at­ed from Penn­syl­va­nia drilling.

Momen­tum in the anti-frack­ing bat­tle will con­tin­ue to build across the Mar­cel­lus and Uti­ca shale regions through­out July. Next week­end, res­i­dents from Ohio and beyond will gath­er at an anti-frack­ing action camp in Youngstown and pre­pare to enforce the “people’s res­o­lu­tion” against frack­ing. The upcom­ing months show the begin­nings of a nation­al rebel­lion against extrac­tive indus­try across the board. On July 28, anti-frack­ers from across the nation will gath­er in Wash­ing­ton D.C. for “Stop the Frack Attack,” the largest mobi­liza­tion against frack­ing ever. In West Vir­ginia, Appalachi­ans and allies will stand togeth­er at the “Moun­tain Mobi­liza­tion” and shut down an active strip mine the last week of July. In Montana,the “Coal Export Action”, a ten-day cam­paign of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence at the begin­ning of August will tar­get coal ship­ments from strip mines in the Pow­der Riv­er Basin, over­seas. And lat­er in the month, Texas res­i­dents have called for the “Tar Sands Block­ade” to block the recent­ly approved south­ern leg of the Key­stone XL pipeline.

Where the gov­ern­ment has failed to act to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties and the earth from the rav­ages of an out-of-con­trol ener­gy indus­try, the peo­ple are ris­ing up to resist. No mat­ter where you live, you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join the fight for our future. Find your place, stand your ground, and in the words of Moth­er Jones, “Boo­gie Chilluns.”

UPDATE, 11:53 am:
Police mak­ing vague threats at block­ade about assault rifles going off and wan­der­ing through block­ade with assault rifles.  How­ev­er, at the ral­ly they said there’s a sick bear up the road that needs to be put down, and not to freak out if a gun shot is heard.

Police ini­ti­at­ed anoth­er round of nego­ti­a­tion with the ral­ly insist­ing folks move the debris that’s in the road because it’s a safe­ty risk, mak­ing veiled threats about things esca­lat­ing if that doesn’t hap­pen.  Police have informed peo­ple it’s ille­gal to block the road, but have not giv­en any order to dis­perse, they said “if it doesn’t hap­pen [dis­per­sal] they don’t want things to esca­late.”  Oth­er­wise, sit­u­a­tion unchanged.

UPDATE  10:14 am:
State police on scene at sup­port­ing ral­ly.

UPDATE  10:10 am:
Two tree-sit­ters block­ing the well pad access road–their anchor lines are cross­ing the road and each oth­er, and if an anchor line is cut­ter a sit­ter will fall.  There’s also a slash pile in the road.  No police on seen and appar­ent­ly no secu­ri­ty either.

UPDATE  9:30 am:
Mar­cel­lus Earth First! and sup­port­ers have set up a block­ade at an EQT well pad in the Moshan­non Penn­syl­va­nia State For­est.  An addi­tion­al group of 40 sup­port­ers are hold­ing a ral­ly down the road, and have blocked a Hal­libur­ton truck.  The activists plan to stay as long as they can.  Stay tuned for more updates as infor­ma­tion becomes avail­able.