Today marks the start of the trial on the Drakulic Well Pad, originally proposed by Apex in 2014 in Westmoreland County, PA.
Today commences the long-awaited trial on the proposed Drakulic Well Pad, located in Penn Township, PA, and adjacent to the residential borough of Trafford. After an entire decade of community action attempting to stop the construction of this well pad in a heavily populated area, Protect PT and their lawyer, Attorney Lisa Johnson, sit before the Environmental Hearing Board in downtown Pittsburgh.
For Executive Director Gillian Graber, this trial is personal. The Drakulic well pad was proposed about a year after she moved her family to a quiet, residential neighborhood in Trafford, where she hoped to raise her two kids amongst the lush forests and rolling hills of western PA. Once she first caught wind of the heavy industrial operation being placed right next to her home, she was activated. How can they do this to her residential community?
Across southwest Pennsylvania, families just like hers were experiencing the same thing. Fracking had taken hold, and industry swept in, littering the rural landscape with well pads next to homes, businesses, and schools. Even after the 43rd Statewide Grand Jury, led by now Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, found that the state of Pennsylvania failed to protect residents during this fracking boom, industry continued to forge ahead, hoping to extract the natural resources deep underground in the Marcellus and Utica Shale formations.
The tech industry is known for a philosophy where you innovate—“move fast”—and you keep going until it breaks. The social consequences are secondary. The oil and gas industry is much the same. Operators put little care into protecting the health of nearby residents or the environment in general. Eventually, studies came out that found that these fracking wells have severe negative impacts on the health of residents within 10 miles of well pads. We’ve seen them destroy wetlands and poison private citizens' well water. They repeatedly demonstrate a complete disregard for the communities they enter. Nevertheless, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) continues to permit these operators to drill across these sleepy communities.
The agency, its name oxymoronic it seems, has shown itself to be pro-industry. While we sit in this courtroom on the second floor of a luxury condominium complex, DEP’s lawyers sit alongside Apex’s lawyers. It’s an obvious display of the partiality for industry that runs our state agency and a violation of our constitutional right to clean air and pure water.
Apex and PA DEP teams fill over half the room, noticeably with designer bags and crisp black suits. Gillian wears a pair of jeans, a Protect PT tee shirt, and her trusty pink backpack. She’s a mom on a mission, hoping she can go home at the end of the trial and know that her children will grow up without a well pad for a neighbor. That they won’t be awoken before that important test with the incessant sounds of drilling and won’t feel the vibrations of the earth under their feet as they play soccer at the playground across the street.
This is what she has been fighting for the last 10 years—why she began organizing her neighbors into what has become a nonprofit organization with eight full-time staff members. Now, Protect PT aims to protect residents across Westmoreland and Allegheny counties, working to advocate for their interests on issues related to fracking, oil and gas waste, and sustainable energy solutions.
The trial doesn’t play out like the movies. The attorneys, witnesses, and the judge all have ginormous binders of discovery in front of them. I can’t help but think about the irony of how many trees it took to stop Apex from damaging our environment. As the attorneys question the witnesses, they all must flip through these binders, and often long pauses tick by as they flip to locate the right page. In the lapsed time, you hear the occasional cough and the incessant clicking of a keyboard from Apex’s legal team. One of Apex’s lawyers repeatedly interrupts Attorney Johnson and even goes as far as to interrupt the judge—a kind woman, quick to offer a smile. Their other lawyer borders on rude, refusing to even look Johnson in the eye when she directly speaks to her.
The questioning feels like it goes in circles. Apex objects to their own exhibits to be submitted to the record and verbally objects to every other question Johnson poses. It is tedious, to say the least. Because the burden of proof is on Protect PT, the feeling that this uphill battle hasn’t flattened out settles over the prosecution.
There are definitely glimmers of hope, however—Apex admitted they did not do thorough research regarding public resources. There was an acknowledgment that they did not look into all nearby private water wells to the site. It also appears that they did not look into nearby schools, hospitals, nursing homes, or parks in the vicinity of the pad.
Protect PT will continue fighting for the environmental rights of the residents in PT until the trial concludes at the end of January and likely after, when the matter moves into whatever next step is necessitated. Gillian, and her trusty backpack, will be there every step of the way.
Emily Nissley
Communications Manager
Protect PT