Last week, DotEarth blogger Andrew Revkin told a Penn State audience that on the balance, he believed that the proliferation of information on the internet will go toward good, true, and accurate information. We certainly hope so. In that vain of hope, we offer this tragic piece of on-the-ground citizen journalism.
The Bedford Free Press has posted Mary McConnell's story as a property owner in Bedford Country. Her property sits on the Marcellus Shale where Columbia Oil & Gas is drilling. She has been facing an incredible maze of gas corporation wrangling, governmental and legal mess, and the despoliation of her land and water. She has to sleep with a gas mask because her house is full of methane.
The email lists that have been circulating these videos are full of shock on one hand and almost eye-rolling and yawns because stories like this are business as usual. Even among activists, these stories cease to shock. Their sheer persistence, pervasiveness, and even the fat that they seem to be more frequent isn't shocking anymore.
Who has been irreparably damaged?
Over the past several months we've talked to people who don't believe that we live in a democracy anymore. Some of them, Patrick Walker and Rosa Eberly to name two, have argued that we live in a Gasocracy - a people under a government by the gas companies and for the gas companies. Whether that view is correct or not, there are petitions out there now to impeach Tom Corbett precisely because of the new administration's collusion with gas companies. What do you think? Who should be at the government's helm?
Addendum:
Today is the meeting of Governor Tom Corbett's Marcellus Shale Commission that she spoke of. There is a contingent of activists going down today. We will be following up on that story with reports from activists who attend.
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