For Better or For Worse? - Blog Prompt #4

Ahh, Pittsburgh. You were one of the most booming industrial cities at the height of the Industrial Revolution and for decades thereafter. According to Pittsburgh Green Story, from 1850 to 1980, your waters and heavens were polluted as you rose to power because of your love affair with coal. A short natural gas flirtation occurred in the late 1800s, at which point you seemed to clean up, but it wasn't meant to last. You returned to your roots, deep under your ground in fact, where the black gold pulled you back under, sunk its claws into you.

Look at you now! Your skies are blue and clear, your parks green and flourishing, even your cemeteries inundated with plant and animal life. Chatham University is not only an arboretum in itself but is also a leading force in sustainable living within your limits. And one of your daughters, Rachel Carson, is a legend in the environmental movement.

But not all is well in your belly. There's more than just black gold down there, and it's as invisible as air. The natural gas, clean and cheap, within your Marcellus Shale is said to be environmentally better than the coal which coats your stomach, your breath. But is progress always so easy? Of course not.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking as it's called in the press, is the process by which companies extract the gas from inside you. How can anyone come to possess something which is intangible? Marcellus Shale Protest explains: "Once a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand and proprietary chemicals are injected, under high pressure, into a well. The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well." Wait. Millions of gallons of water? "Proprietary" chemicals?! Of course sand is dirty; it looks like the natural gas industry is, too.

Just how much better and cleaner can something be if the effort that goes into it is polluted? Contaminated "wastewater" is treated, but up to 50% of the initial amount used is lost forever. Still, in Butler, PA, C. says that she can light the air surrounding the water coming out of her faucet on fire with the flick of a lighter. Apparently the treatments to clean the used water are working, which is phenomenal news since the industry is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

As the VOCs, or valatile organic compounds, are evaporated off of the water recovered, it combines with diesel exhaust to create ozone plumes that stretch for miles. So much for the cleaner air, it seems, but who cares, since the industry is exempt from the Clean Air Act.

And those ill people and dead animals which show up around fracking-developed areas? It's got to be unrelated. After all, those signs posted in the Allegheny and Moshannon State Forests touting toxic water were put up by hoodlums.

Pittsburgh, your people have done something amazing, though. They've stood up for their rights and yours and banned fracking within your body. But it's all around you; it won't stay away. There's no way to cut off your length of Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers to exempt them. There's no way for you to stop the wind blowing the ozone into your heart, to exempt your air.

Is it really worth it? As it's been said, how much cleaner can an industry be if it's already polluted?