This article originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

August 21, 2011

John W. Cobb Jr.: Speak out about Marcellus drilling

I attended the last of three public meetings held by five House of Delegates members to hear the concerns of West Virginia citizens regarding the needs for a Marcellus Shale Bill with strong landowner protective regulations.

The meeting at Robert C. Byrd High School in Clarksburg on July 27 was definitely the best show of the three meetings, with about 700 present. A fourth of the crowd signed up to speak. Delegate Tim Manchin, presiding, cut speaking time from the planned two minutes per speaker to 1.5 minutes. So many people talked, the meeting ran until 11 p.m.

At the two previous meetings at Wheeling and Morgantown, the Marcellus Gas Industry made a fairly poor showing versus affected landowners, environmentalists and people with homeowner's complaints.

This time, gas companies pulled out all the stops, and about half the crowd wore blue stickers on their chests saying "WE SUPPORT WV GAS." Early on, Corky DeMarco almost broke up the meeting when he asked gas supporters to stand up and almost everyone else booed.

The gas industry wound up talking first, since company employees had been paid to get there early. One speaker from nearly every occupation related to shale drilling explained what he or she did in one-and-a half minutes each, and many from related businesses spoke, too.

The large parking lot was filled with out-of-state cars and trucks with Texas, Oklahoma and other state licenses, yet of course, to impress the elected officials, nearly all of the industry speakers said they were native West Virginians.

Each person from the gas industry had a scripted note to read and was well prepared. It had the appearance of being well orchestrated by industry management.

Their arguments were almost exclusively economic -- good jobs, good paychecks and pro-development. The speaker from Glenville State said they are getting graduates employed at $60,000. The speaker from Steptoe and Johnson said they now have 178 lawyers primarily in gas matters, and the 178 make $11 million.

Later in the meeting, after most of the gas companies' paid employees had gone, there was an increasing number of environmentalists, farm and homeowners with and without gas rights on their properties who spoke about their concerns.

Some concerns included the state of their crumbling roads; some had lost their water wells. One lady and her family were crowded off their farm in Doddridge County into an apartment by three Marcellus wells. There were complaints about contamination of creek water, worry about harm to fish and other aquatic life by runoff of water coming up from wells along Cheat Lake.

There was considerable finger pointing at legislators, telling them they had responsibility to protect people in the areas being drilled.

The three meetings are over, but there is still time for more dialogue by citizens. Please take the time to contact your local elected officials and ask them to support fair regulations that will protect us all here in West Virginia from the potential dangers of Marcellus Shale drilling.

My thanks to all five delegates, Tim Manchin, Barbara Fleischauer, Tom Campbell, Woody Ireland and Bill Anderson, for taking their valuable time to listen to the public even though the gas companies tried to monopolize the podium for the early part of the meeting. It was not counterproductive as in the end our concerns were fully heard.

Cobb lives in Ireland, Lewis.