Amity and Prosperity_One Family and the Fracturing of America

by Eliza Griswold

  We donned hard hats and protective glasses before heading south on I-79 toward the Amity/Lone Pine exit in a gray, unmarked Jeep. Mackin and Windle were locals. In their thirties, both had grown up in the shadow of industrial collapse—“post steel,” Windle called it. They were thoughtful young men: smart and looking forward to long careers in oil and gas, ideally at Range. Despite Range’s dismal stock price, Mackin and Windle were optimistic about the company’s future, and that of natural gas in general. For the first time in two years, Range had reported a quarterly profit that April. The hottest shale play was elsewhere now, down in Texas and Louisiana in the Permian Basin, where Range had recently spent $3.3 billion acquiring a Louisiana-based driller. Unlike the Marcellus, the Permian promised a ready market nearby, the Gulf’s petrochemical belt, and the pipeline to reach it. Yet Range was late to the new play, and the Permian boom brought problems too: most operators in the Gulf were drilling for more lucrative oil. For them, the gas that flowed out of the ground wasn’t valuable; it was nearly free. On Wall Street, although most analysts argued that natural gas was ready for a comeback, others, who were watching the growth of renewables, problems with pipelines, and a disappointing global gas market, weren’t so sure.

  To secure its future, Range was betting on ethane—used to make ethylene, for everything from antifreeze to plastics to ripening fruit. Ethane was a liquid cheap and easy to derive from natural gas, and Range was the first U.S. company to export ethane to Europe in a boat custom-built by the Chinese. An hour away, where Windle grew up in Beaver County, Shell was building a huge ethane cracker plant not far from Pittsburgh International Airport, which had also leased nine thousand acres to oil and gas. Appalachia was hoping to build similar plants elsewhere, to create a petrochemical belt of its own supplied by the natural gas of the Marcellus. Even though it wasn’t open yet, the new plant was changing attitudes and fortunes in Beaver, Windle said.

  “When I grew up, you were—my grandparents were teachers—you were either a teacher in my town, or you worked for US Air, or you worked for FirstEnergy down the street.” Windle went on, “Things haven’t changed there in twenty years, up until about a year ago when Shell started moving dirt. Just, you know, commerce—things have totally changed, the Chamber of Commerce out there has totally reshaped itself, so it’s pretty exciting. Everyone is really excited.” Windle’s siblings were also employed by the industry. His sister was Range’s in-house attorney, and his brother worked for the opposition research group FTI Consulting.

  We passed the Lone Pine truck stop, which, in addition to the Subway franchise, was now home to Washington County’s largest beer store—boasting five hundred brands on the banner tied to a chain-link fence in front of an RV graveyard. We took the back route past the Days’ farm toward the Yeager site.

  We’d agreed that day to talk about Range’s current practices, and what had changed over the past few years. We got out of the Jeep and walked around the well pad. Then we stood knee-deep in the field of alfalfa where the frack pond once sat and peered over the edge of the hill and across the road to the barn roof at Justa Breeze. “It’s no secret to you, we’ve had some challenges on this location,” Mackin told me. “We’ve learned from these challenges, and we’ve developed a better way to practice.”

  The better way to practice involved abandoning drill cuttings pits, which had been decommissioned since 2011. With the downturn in natural gas prices, Range, like others, had found ways to cut drilling costs, which had the simultaneous advantage of reducing the well pad’s surface footprint. Sand silos now stood vertically as opposed to horizontally so they took up less room, and instead of building new pads, Range returned to existing sites to drill more wells as technology allowed. Where there had been three or four, on average, per pad, there could be upward of a dozen.

  Range now recycled 100 percent of its fracking wastewater by using it to frack again, Mackin said. Although that cut down dramatically on the withdrawal of water, there was still the problem of where to store the liquid between fracks. The company continued to operate impoundments in Washington County. But the liners Range now used were double the previous thickness. Instead of two layers of liner, Range now used five, placing clay and other protective soils between them. Range had finally adopted the long-discussed “closed loop” system, Mackin further told me, in which all kinds of waste—flowback, drilling muds, cuttings—were now stored in containers, not in open ponds. But that made no sense to me. He’d just said there were two open ponds in Washington County. That wasn’t a closed loop as I understood it.

  We drove on a few miles to an active site to watch a seventy-five-foot-high white Pioneer rig drill successive horizontals for four new wells. A Range Resources flag that read TOP DAWG fluttered from the roof of a trailer. Squat gray tanks belonging to Halliburton waited by the rig’s base; inside them were the elements needed to shoot cement to seal the casing of the well. Nearby sat red Adler tanks filled with water to mix the cement for the casings. Mackin pointed out the berm that covered most of the site. If anything spilled, it spilled on that tarp and not on the ground, he stressed. That was a major change in itself.

  Mark: “I can’t speak to how other operators do things, but we’ve always just gone the Range way. The white hat guys … from the country western movies, doing things the right way.”

  Mike: “It’s not outward-facing, necessarily, but internally, be the white hat guy, do the right thing. Even if things are—even if you’re facing tough situations, you gotta do the right thing.”

  The white hat guys doing the right thing—I knew they believed it. Yet I knew that Beth, Stacey, their families, and the Smiths never would. It was nearly impossible to think how one small patch of earth could contain such disparate stories. Later that day, I stopped by the Voyles’. John was out on his tractor, a light beer in a cup holder, mowing the yard. “At least you know we’re not crazy,” he called, stopping the mower as I pulled in the driveway. “You saw the vapor, you smelled it.” Beth came out of the house trailed by a boxer named Titan. She still had blisters on her face. “I’ve never had so much hate in my heart. We’re not supposed to feel that way, but I do. There are so many people out there who know what’s going on, but they’re not affected so they don’t care,” she said. She was grateful, though, that her daughter was doing better. Ashley was working as a highway laborer pouring concrete for road crews, a difficult job that helped prepare her to become a heavy machine operator. Someday, she wanted to be able to drive a bulldozer, crane, and backhoe. The work would pay well, although it would take years of training. It was also something to look forward to.

  “I’m tired of everything being so negative,” Ashley told me. She still lived at home and ran a small horse training business out of her mom’s barn. But the trouble with the gas wells in such a small community had left some of the same psychological scars on her that it had on Harley. “I’m worried about what the world thinks of me,” she said. “I’m so quiet and bland. I’m boring. I’m down all the time.” The sense of indignation that Beth and Stacey had focused outward in their ongoing battle, Ashley and Harley had turned inward upon themselves. “Instead of having the rage, it has just backed me down a hundred times worse,” Ashley went on. Despite everything that had occurred up at the Yeagers’ farm, she still hoped to build her own home close by. She’d spoken to Stacey about the possibility of buying her abandoned farm, and Stacey promised to consider it, although she didn’t want Ashley bringing up kids in the contaminated house. But Ashley, like her mother, was hell-bent on staying on McAdams. She wasn’t so scared of the air; what she feared for was their water. Ashley was hoping that as part of a settlement, the defendants would pay to run the city water line all the way to Justa Breeze, and to Stacey’s. As a parting gift, Beth handed me a jar of the honey they’d been spinning the day before.

  I drove on five miles to Mankey Lane and was sitting at the kitchen table when Paige came in from school with an envelope in hand. In a few days,
she would graduate from high school. Gone was the gangly eleven-year-old, and in her stead sauntered a tawny teenager in ripped jeans and a skin-tight tank. She tossed the envelope on the table. In 2012, a teacher had had her write a letter to her future self. Dear Paige, it began, Hey Cutie! How are you doing? How is the gas well situation?

  Five years later, there was still no answer, although the case’s demands kept coming. Range’s attorneys wanted to depose Linda and Pappy, as well as Stacey’s ex, Larry. Stacey thought that the company wanted to see how they’d hold up as witnesses in a trial, and that was fine by her. Stacey believed that if they did have to go to trial, Range would lose. When a jury of her peers heard about Harley’s trips to the ER, the altered test results, and the fact that she believed Range employees had lied to her face, telling her the water was safe to drink, the people of Washington County would side with her. All that righteous indignation didn’t matter much, however. Stacey didn’t want to go to trial. She wanted to settle. She couldn’t take the stress, let alone the time away from work. A jury trial would last for weeks, maybe months. Stacey could never take all that time to attend, and her absence might hurt them. Even the family depositions were costing her time and emotional energy.

  Mam did okay under oath, but Pappy railed against Range. During discovery, Range had gone so far as to subpoena Stacey’s journals. She wasn’t sure how the company even knew they existed. During Pappy’s deposition, an attorney had read a passage in which she’d written of her feelings that her parents had never really been there for her. Pappy replied under oath that she’d been a difficult child. Afterward, Stacey scolded Pappy, telling him that Range could use his testimony against her. Pappy felt awful, but the truth was he’d said very little. Larry, on the other hand, was a greater concern. It had been ten years since he’d left in 2007, and he and Stacey didn’t speak. He felt that she’d chased him out of Harley’s and Paige’s lives, and she felt he’d abandoned them. She had no idea what he’d say under oath, if he’d use a deposition to get back at her for ten years of acrimony. But he didn’t. Stacey was right, he told Range’s attorneys. When he’d lived at McAdams, the water had been pure, and as he’d watched his son sicken, albeit mostly from a distance, he too had believed that Harley was suffering from chemical exposure. For once, she grudgingly admitted that Larry had done the right thing.

  Harley now understood that neither the FBI nor anyone else was coming to save them. He felt that the only way Range would have to truly pay was if there was negative publicity, and that required a trial. And since he was a named plaintiff in the suit, and now an adult, his vote mattered.

  One afternoon, he fought over the issue with his mom. “Let everyone see what they’ve done,” he said. Stacey was trying to support him while pushing the kids along in their lives. Like Stacey, Harley couldn’t afford to sit in a courtroom for weeks, she told him. He’d lose his job. Harley had decided to give up on lawn care and go to work installing residential gas pipelines. There was a spot available on his cousin Judd’s three-man crew, and he was taking it. Stacey was pleased. She wouldn’t have to help run his business anymore or worry about his falling out of a tree.

  “Harley, you have to move on,” she told him.

  “I’ll never move on, Mom, they’ve ruined my life,” he said. Ciarra sat next to him, holding his hand.

  “Well, Paige and I are getting better and we need you to move on too,” she said.

  “I can get better, I am doing better,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I will ever move on from this.” Harley and Ciarra got up to head to the basement, where Ciarra now lived with Harley. They rarely emerged, except to eat late at night when everyone else was asleep. They left crumbs around, and Chris had taken to calling them “the mice.” To spend more time with Harley, Ciarra had left the University of Pittsburgh and her degree in international business to come home and attend Washington & Jefferson, a liberal arts college. Because of Harley, she was studying psychology now. She wanted to understand his anxiety and depression.

  Stacey was filling blue Ball jars with baby’s breath for centerpieces for Paige’s graduation party. They were hosting the party at Cross Creek Park, where, after developing gas wells on the public land, Range had donated playground equipment and a handicapped-accessible dock.

  While Stacey prepared for Paige’s party, Harley went outside to rock on the weathered rocking bench next to the fire pit—the spot where he’d sat over the years as I asked him uncomfortable questions about his strained friendships and his pot-smoking. He seemed different now, more comfortable in his skin. He even looked me in the eye when I followed him out to ask how he was doing.

  “Today was my last day of mowing,” he said. “It’s like I can feel the stress dropping off of me.” He looked forward to getting out of the basement every day, to seeing other people, to watching the world change beyond the backyard and the county fair. The job came with benefits, and Harley was glad to have them. It also fit his moral code: this suburban gas line ran under towns and through populated places. “What they do has to be done,” he said. But where country remained pure, he wasn’t going to put a hand toward ruining it.

  POSTSCRIPT

  The following winter, on the evening of January 18, 2018, Beth cooked spaghetti and meatballs for Ashley and the dogs. She and John were too anxious to eat. Finally, after nearly six years, settlement talks in Haney v. Range were scheduled to begin. To prepare for the meeting with Range and the ten other remaining defendants, Beth had invited two friends to come pray with her. Together, the women read aloud from Luke 1:37—For with God, nothing is impossible—and called in to a prayer hotline. Afterward, for a few hours, Beth felt better. Then she sat on the leather couch in her basement to read the expert reports that Range had filed in the case. Their doctors maintained that neither Beth nor any of the other plaintiffs suffered from chemical exposure, which made Beth furious.

  Whatever came of the talks, Beth feared being silenced. What if settlement required signing some kind of gag order? What if they weren’t allowed to speak about what had happened to them? Confidentiality clauses are meant to protect all parties and aren’t unusual in such settlements. But for Ashley also, the possibility of having to sign one was troubling.

  “My dogs can’t talk,” she said, sitting on the floor next to her mom, a plate of spaghetti in her lap. “Neither can my horses. I’m the only one who can speak for what happened to them.”

  For Ashley, there was one bright spot in the potential settlement: Stacey had agreed that once it was over, she’d sell the abandoned farm to Ashley. It didn’t matter anymore that it had been Stacey’s great-grandfather’s; Stacey wanted to be rid of it and would sell it for as little as possible since the house was unlivable and there was no running water. Ashley still wanted to draw a water line from Amity. But it turned out that wasn’t going to be cheap. According to an engineer the Smiths hired as an expert, the cost of bringing city water to the Haneys’, Kiskaddens’, and Voyles’ farms would be $1 million per home. Meanwhile Range’s experts held that even if all the chemicals the plaintiffs alleged were actually in their water, the cost of treating the water would be only $11,000 to $13,000 per household. And furthermore, the plaintiffs’ water was not atypical for Washington County. “All inorganic constituents are naturally occurring and have other possible sources,” one expert wrote. The Environmental Hearing Board had confirmed this finding in Kiskadden v. DEP.

  Buzz’s defeat in court was likely to hurt all the plaintiffs. And two other more recent court decisions weighed against them. John Smith had lost his motion to challenge the definition of strict liability and argue that in Pennsylvania, bystanders like Stacey, Beth, and Buzz should be allowed to claim injury even if they weren’t the intended “end users” of the products in question. Most important, the Court refused to sanction Range for not complying with a court order. The company never provided the plaintiffs with a definitive list of all chemicals used at the site. Range, Judge Kathleen Emery held
, had tried hard enough to find out.

  Stacey, like Beth, feared these decisions didn’t bode well for settlement. She too was anxious about the upcoming talks. Each night that week leading up to the Friday meeting, Stacey struggled to sleep, and when she finally managed to nod off, she did odd things just as she had during the worst of her PTSD. One night, Chris woke to Stacey picking at his beard; another, she was swatting at his face.

  “Should I wear a helmet tonight?” he asked her as they crawled into bed the night before the settlement talks began. She laughed. She didn’t know what she’d do without Chris’s humor. He was so good at gently poking at her, changing her mood. On the morning of January 19, when her alarm went off at 5:15 a.m., she wasn’t sure she’d slept. She got up, put water on for tea, and ducked into the bathroom to shower in advance of the kids. Since their home on Mankey Lane had only a single bathroom, on days like this when they all had to leave the house at the same time, they followed a schedule. Paige would shower at 6:30 a.m. and Harley at 6:45 a.m.

  No one wanted breakfast. Stacey didn’t know what to expect, which made it impossible to prepare the kids for how events might unfold. To guard against disappointment, she explained that talks could last from five minutes to twelve hours, and still achieve nothing. If they did succeed in settling, whatever amount each family was awarded, the Smiths would take 33 percent from the adults and 25 percent from the children. “No matter what happens, we’ll be okay,” she told the kids that morning in the kitchen. Reaching a settlement would at least mean she and Chris could afford to get married.