But unlocking half-billion-year-old hydrocarbon deposits carries a price, and not everyone shares in the bonanza. For every new shale well, 4 million to 8 million gallons of water, laced with potentially poisonous chemicals, are pumped into the ground under explosive pressure--a violent geological assault.

And once unleashed, the gas requires a vast industrial architecture to be processed and moved from the wells to the world. Imagine the pipes, compressors, ponds, pits, refineries, and meters each shale well in Pennsylvania demands, planted next to horse farms, cornfields, houses, and schools. Then multiply by 5,000.


"It's changed everything, all right," says Pam Judy, a resident of Carmichaels, in neighboring Greene County. Her now-unsellable dream home sits 780 feet downwind of three enormous gas compressors, which appeared in 2009. "It sounds like helicopters in the backyard," she says. "The fumes make me dizzy. My children get headaches and nosebleeds. Some opportunity."

"It's turned neighbor against neighbor," says JoAnne Wagner, an outspoken homemaker who battled unsuccessfully to keep fracking away from her children's schools in Mount Pleasant Township. She tells about the day she opened her garage and was hit by an overpowering, burning-chemical smell. Can she prove the source? No. But such stories are common in America's fracking capital. "The gas companies have been given carte blanche to put anything anywhere," she says.


Since the shale boom began, gas companies have been cited by Pennsylvania regulators for more than 4,100 violations. The citizen's group PennEnvironment studied 3,355 of these reported violations, from 2008 to 2011, and found that more than 70 percent likely posed "a direct threat to our environment."

Washington County farmers complain of stillborn and deformed calves near fracking operations. Residential well water has turned murky and undrinkable. Homeowners near massive gas compressor stations complain of respiratory ailments, chronically sick children, and the sudden deaths of pets. While cause and effect is often hotly disputed--particularly when it comes to sources of water-well contamination--similar complaints are echoed in communities throughout the state and nation wherever shale gas is being drilled.


Among those speaking out is 53-year-old Jeannie Moten of the tiny Washington County village of Rea, where 22 residents have been beset by eye-watering fumes and noxious drinking water they attribute to a fracked gas well on a hillside above their homes. Residents complain of "frack rash," asthma, diarrhea, incontinence, sore throats, and joint pain. Moten claims that the water from her mother's faucets stinks so horribly that visitors flee, and that the fumes have set off the household smoke alarm. Tests have revealed the presence of strontium, benzene, and other toxics--some of them matching the proprietary fracking compounds used to break open the shale. Moten says her tap water has even spewed live brine shrimp into her glass on several occasions. So far, her complaints to township officials have led nowhere. Doctors have told her to move, but it's the only home she's known, and her elderly mother depends on her.[11]