A Fable for Our Time

Plenty of gas, plenty of money.
      
John and Mary Ludlow nestled comfortably together on their $3000 sectional, La-Z-Boy sofa on a bitterly cold January 22nd evening in 2020. Their gas-heated, four-bedroom, three-car-garage home along Spruce Creek excluded winter’s worst blows.
      
Back in 2010 the Ludlows had lived in a modest cabin on the same plot. John had worked at the time as an automobile insurance agent for Nationwide out of his office in the nearby borough of Westerfield. Mary had been an aide at the local Fullbrook Elementary School. Although childless, they were quite happy working and living in their rather remote, peaceful and quiet region of north central Pennsylvania.
     
In June of that year, with the explosion of Marcellus shale gas drilling all around Spruce Creek, John was offered a substantial amount of money by Primo International Gas, a company based in Dallas, Texas, for the right to drill on property he owned up on Broad Mountain above Spruce Creek. He and his wife decided that it was just too much money not to accept.
      
Then in July John was asked, since he possessed a commercial driver’s license, if he would like to drive a water supply truck for Primo. Since the salary would be about double what he took in yearly as an insurance agent, he accepted. Mary gave up her work at the school.
      
During the next 10 years, the Ludlows’ lifestyle rose and rose and rose. They saved a ton of money; they razed their cabin and built their large, modern home, then furnished it lavishly; they ate dinner regularly at all the most expensive, fine restaurants in the area.
      
During those years, the gas industry expanded and expanded and expanded. Thousands of wells were drilled all over north central Pennsylvania. The economy was truly booming.
      
When their well was contaminated in 2014 by a combination of methane gas seepage due to the extensive drilling and the “accidental” discharge of several million gallons of “residual waste water” into Spruce Creek, Primo arranged for water to be regularly trucked up and poured into the holding tank provided by the company outside the Ludlows’ home.
     
Three large fires occurred early in the dry summer of 2015 in the mountains surrounding Spruce Creek, one of them caused by a cigarette carelessly tossed by one of Primo’s pipeline layers, one by a spark from a rainstorm-downed electrical line serving a gas well pad, and the third by a lightning bolt striking gas leaking from a compression station. In all, approximately 25,000 acres of wooded land was lost in the infernos, and, most tragically, a couple who had been out hiking.
      
In response to the fire losses, Primo donated $3000 to the Sabert Lumber Museum in Westerfield to be used to help finance a new display on the history of the white pine and hemlock of the region. And, in honor of the hikers who lost their lives, the company also made a donation of $1500 to the local branch of the Audubon Hiking Society in the nearby north central Pennsylvania city of Miriamsport.
      
By 2016 most of the wildlife around Spruce Creek had disappeared, believed to be due to a combination of deaths from gas-related stream pollution, from being killed by the thousands of gas-related trucks constantly travelling up and down the valley, and from avoidance of the noise and diesel pollution from the continual stream of these gas-related trucks, with related migrations westward. No deer, bear, blue herons, or bald eagles were seen in the valley that year or afterwards. Native wild brown trout became a part of history.
      
Primo International Gas responded to the wildlife disaster by constructing a small wildlife museum up at the village of Hemlock Run five miles above the Ludlows’ home. There, in beautiful, well-lighted display cases, the company arranged for exhibits of black bears, white-tailed deer, bald eagles, blue herons, timber rattlesnakes, turtles, beavers, porcupines, otters, even mink. Primo also made a donation of $1000 to Trout Unlimited.
      
By 2018 many of the species of wildflowers native to the area disappeared also. Dame’s rockets, purple raspberry, elderberry, laurel, Jerusalem artichoke, Virginia Waterleaf, Asiatic dayflowers, forget-me-nots, wild columbines—all gone. Primo, however, showing environmental concern, gave $500 donations to five area greenhouses.
     
The popularity of both hunting in the woods around Spruce Creek and fishing in its waters diminished greatly through the second decade of the 21st century until, by 2020, both sports were practically nonexistent there. What had been an outdoor paradise became a barren land, with the only regular sounds being those of the rumbling trucks on what was by then labeled the industrial highway through the valley, and the eerie roar of methane burn-offs. Dominant sights were great, denuded sections of forest land; gas riggings all over the mountains and valley; miles and miles of water and gas pipe lines; the lurid, red glow of methane burn-offs at night; and the steady flow of trucks of all types—excavation, equipment, fresh water, residual waste, lumber, many 18-wheel semis.
     
John and Mary Ludlow finally rose from their sofa to get ready for bed. “We’ve got the good life here now, don’t we?” John asked his wife.

“Yes, dear,” Mary replied. “Plenty of gas, plenty of money.”