It’s difficult to capture the sense of palpable anxiety I felt taking these sets of photographs.
This is the Janet Hock Road compressor construction site in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania that I have been documenting for about 10 months. It is simply staggering to witness the complete destruction of this once gorgeous vista, this small mountain now flattened, trenched, and riveted back together with pipeline.
Here is where it all began, March, 2012 (though in truth much earlier in the plans of Meridian Energy, LLC).
It began with the ripping off of the top of this small mountain.
It’s like the body of one moment of earth murdered and then reinvigorated as an industrial monster.
The public road going in and out has been appropriated as a staging area for pipe construction–so that there is effectively no way to not be on the site. There were a number of trucks–and quite a few workers for a Saturday. Note carefully the license plates–Texas, Alaska, Kentucky.
Note carefully the failed welds, the corrections pencilled in on the sides of the pipes.
COMPRESSOR STATIONS, WATER WITHDRAWALS, TRANSMISSION LINES OUT TO THE GLOBAL MARKET, THE USE OF LANDFILLS FOR FRACK “CAKE,” DEEP INJECTION WELLS, MASSIVE ROAD DESTRUCTION, THE USE OF FRACK WASTE AS ROAD DE-ICER, THE GROSS ABUSE OF PROPRIETARY PROPERTY RIGHTS TO CONCEAL THE FACT THAT THEIR POISONING US, SB 367–THE FRACK U BILL–WITHOUT ALL OF THIS, THE FRACKING INDUSTRY COULD NOT OPERATE.
They must have a way to get the gas to the global market where they can make a profit. They must have a million and one places to dump the carcinogenic, poisonous waste. They must have the water, the water, the water to frack.
They’ll eventually cover all this up with some green grass, some new shrubbery–and a big damn fence. They count on us to forget that it’s right under our feet. Waiting to explode just like the one in Susquehanna County. They count on us to NOT want to see.
So I keep taking pictures.
We must must MUST keep looking. And they must know that we are not merely looking–but that we SEE what they are doing. That our eyes are wide open to this RAPE of our land and the poisoning of our futures.
