Pennsylvania: The Company Town

Once upon a time I did some work for the Pennsylvania governor's office which included writing a booklet to accompany the state budget summing up programs underway.  It was called The New Pennsylvania: A Commonwealth That Works.

Well apparently there's an even newer Pennsylvania: The Company Town. Or to be more specific, Fracksylvania.

In some ways it's like the old old Pennsylvania of my grandfather's day, bringing up his family in what was literally a company town for many years, owned and operated by a coal company.

Now the fossil fuel frackers apparently own not only big chunks of the state--and I mean own--and they evidently own the legislature and governor's office, no surprise there--but they also apparently own the law.

Here's the story that only a British newspaper appears to care about:

Vera Scroggins, an outspoken opponent of fracking, is legally barred from the new county hospital. Also off-limits, unless Scroggins wants to risk fines and arrest, are the Chinese restaurant where she takes her grandchildren, the supermarkets and drug stores where she shops, the animal shelter where she adopted her Yorkshire terrier, bowling alley, recycling centre, golf club, and lake shore.

In total, 312.5 sq miles are no-go areas for Scroggins under a sweeping court order granted by a local judge that bars her from any properties owned or leased by one of the biggest drillers in the Pennsylvania natural gas rush, Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation.

What is this woman's crime?  She's a political activist against fracking.  Not violent, and there's little evidence she's even disruptive. (Unless you count bringing celebrities in to see the fracking for themselves.)  She's just a heretic.

So two things here.  The law simply bans her from property owned or leased by this monstrous company, with the full knowledge of its extent, and that it includes what passes for public spaces in this town.  Which is totalitarian enough but in practical terms it is an order almost impossible to obey because this company pretty much owns or leases the town.

The court order didn't specify the actual places she can't go, that is, nobody told her exactly what the company owns or leases.

Montrose where Scroggins lives

The company is Cabot.  The story continues:

" Cabot turned up with four lawyers and nine witnesses, employees of the company and the firm it hired to provide security. Scroggins represented herself. She told the court she had been unable to find a lawyer as the hearing had been called on 72 hours' notice.

By the time the hearing was over, the judge had granted Cabot a temporary injunction barring Scroggins from all property owned or leased by the company. "It is hereby ordered that Ms Scroggins is restrained, enjoined and prohibited from entering upon property owned and/or leased by Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation including but not limited to well sites, well pads and access roads," the injunction reads.

The effect of that ban is far broader than the dry legal language would suggest.  In court filings, Cabot said it holds leases on 200,000 acres of land, equivalent to 312.5 sq miles. That amounts to nearly 40% of the largely rural county in north-eastern Pennsylvania where Scroggins lives and where Cabot does most of its drilling."

coke oven in Mt. Pleasant past

This is hardly the only outrage to the rights of American citizens perpetrated by the law in Pennsylvania at the behest of its apparent masters, the fossil fuel frackers.  An earlier case arose in Mount Pleasant,  very near where my father was born and grew up.  It was coal and then coke country then.  Now it's a fracking motherlode.  From another Guardian story:

 "The Hallowich family had earlier accused oil and gas companies of destroying their 10-acre farm in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania and putting their children's health in danger. Their property was adjacent to major industrial operations: four gas wells, gas compressor stations, and a waste water pond, which the Hallowich family said contaminated their water supply and caused burning eyes, sore throats and headaches."

The family settled with the companies involved for $750,000 to move to a safer and healthier place.  But a condition of the 2011 settlement was recently revealed: no member of the family can ever, ever, ever talk about fracking, from any point of view, in any way, to anyone, until they die.  That includes the Hallowich children, who are 7 and 10 years old.  If they speak out of turn, the family loses the money, and at least one of the companies-- Range Resources-- said it will hold them to it.

This story was at least broken locally, by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.  This story adds that confidentiality agreements usually don't apply to children, but there was some question about it in this case because of the specific court order.  What is it?  Well, who really knows?  Reporters were barred from hearings and the record sealed.  The companies involved (not just Range Resources) are so far adamant.

How sweeping is the ban on free speech?  It sounds like it goes far beyond commenting on the case itself.   But the law is apparently conspiring to keep even that much secret.

So in Pennsylvania, free speech is controlled by frackers, a power which the law seems only too happy to hand them.  You can talk about anything in PA except what the fossil fuel dictators say you can't talk about, unless you want to be banned from your grocery store, or have your children live in fear of saying the wrong thing.The U.S. Constitution apparently doesn't apply there anymore.

What's next for Pennsylvania-- the Iron and Coal police? Pinkertons and state police shooting down protestors?  As Pennsylvania becomes Fracksylvania it drills down into the muck of its own worst history.