Flaring is a term used to describe the burning of natural gas from a well that has not yet
been linked to a pipeline. When a well is flared, a huge flame lights up the sky, reaching
higher than treetops, accompanied by a noise similar to a 757 jet engine. Even with both
blinds and curtains, you can still see the flicker of a giant flame inside the house
of Jim Harkins. And meanwhile this has been going on for a week and a half, a flaring day
and night, 24 hours a day, all day long, all night long. His property borders a Marcellus
natural gas well pad. The well site is less than 800 feet from his bedroom window. So far,
the wells on the pad near the Harkins' home has been flared three times, lasting a week
or more each time. This is going on all the time, which has never stopped. So we'd like
to be out doing things outside, but it's kind of depressing to have this going on so close
and so noisy and so nonstop. There's nothing we can do about it, unfortunately, and that's
just the way it is, but it really isn't very enjoyable. This isn't a peace and quiet
God's country setting that we thought we had. The sight and sound of a flaring well are
quite intimidating, but the practice is not a risk to public health, according to the
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, or DMP. I just wish our state legislators could
see and hear this, and one question I'd have for every one of them who regulates this,
or in my opinion doesn't regulate this, is would you want to live next to this garbage?
And if you don't want to, then why should you allow it to happen to anyone else?
Currently in Pennsylvania, a natural gas well can be drilled 200 feet from a home, a business,
school, or hospital. Whatever air pollutants are emitted from the drilling operations,
flaring or not flaring, they're blown onto Jim's property since the forest that once
stood where the well pad now exists no longer blocks the prevailing winds.
My position is 200 feet is just nowhere near far enough distance from a home to have that
kind of industrial activity going on. It just isn't. It's 24 hour a day, 7 day a week activity
with a lot of truck traffic, a lot of noise, a lot of commotion, and it just doesn't create,
in my opinion, enough of a buffer site or sound to allow for peace and quiet and tranquility
and normal living conditions for anyone. And I would just challenge anyone who thinks that
200 feet is adequate to get 200, 500, 700, 1,000 feet from one of these operations and
live there for 24 hours and you tell me if it's adequate.
It's just way too close and way too late at night or early in the morning for this to
be going on. It's just not right. I mean, you can see my bedroom is right there and the
reflection and the sound is just pretty substantial. And that company is within the law, the current
law, to be able to do it. And they can do it to me, they can do it to anybody. And is
that right or my rights being preserved? I don't think so.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett's Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission released a report
on July 22, 2011, meant to influence updates to the state's natural gas regulations. The
recommendations outlined in the report do not include mitigation for the residential
impacts of flaring. However, for those living near Marcellus natural gas well pads where
wells are flared, light and noise pollution are powerful enough to cause sleep deprivation.
I don't know what to do. I have enough trouble sleeping with my headaches and the pain I'm
feeling all the time. I mean, this just exacerbates it. It just seems beyond ridiculous to me.
I don't know. I just don't know. I've been a lifelong Republican and involved in the
Republican Party here in Potter County and believe in the virtues and the approaches
that the party puts forth by and large. Not against drilling. I'm not against safe, responsible
development of our natural resources.
