Clearfield County Hunting Club Contends with Spring Contaminations from Drilling

[blue neen]

This is an excellent article about the horrible impact that Marcellus Shale Drilling is having on the Pennsylvania environment. Please take the time to read the article, and especially view the video. It's poignant. (click on the link at bottom of post).

"Spring water, cold as winter and clear as a windowpane, gushes out of mossy ground in a clearing sprinkled with blooms of forget-me-not next to Stone Camp, the home of the Sykesville Hunting Club in the Moshannon State Forest."

"The bubbling flow has attracted generations of folks from Clearfield County and beyond, but staked into the ground now is a homemade sign bearing the warning: "Contaminated Water."

"The sign seems out of place. Larry Righi certainly thinks so, even though he had a hand in putting it up months after a torn liner under one or more EOG Resources Marcellus Shale drill cuttings pits allowed leakage that contaminated groundwater feeding the spring almost two years ago."

"Mr. Righi, a longtime member of the local landmark Sykesville Hunting Club like his father before him, hopes new water test results will soon give a clean bill of health to the spring, which is the club's only water source."

PG VIDEO: DRILLING IMPACTS HUNTING CLUB

<snip>

Local watering hole

"It's known as Reeds Spring on maps detailing the green expanses of the Moshannon State Forest, and it boils out of the ground into a large pothole of a pool before sloshing down a 1-foot-wide, 50-yard-long channel to a small creek, Alex Branch. The Alex Branch is a tributary of Trout Run, one of the area's better fishing creeks, which flows into the West Branch of the Susquehanna River."

"The spring was a major stopping point. Surrounding hunting camps came here to fill their water jugs, and it was a way to meet guys from other camps," said Tony Zaffuto, a Sykesville Hunting Club member who is originally from that Jefferson County town and now lives in DuBois, Clearfield County. "It was not unusual for people to be lined up for the water with their plastic jugs."

<snip>

A long history

"Inside the Stone Camp, where mounted deer heads, grainy group portraits of club members and topographic maps are the preferred wall art, the framed, original lease for the camp is displayed in a place of honor on the mantle above the big stone fireplace. The lease bears the signature of Gifford Pinchot, then the state's forest commissioner, who had been the first supervisor of the U.S. Forest Service from 1905 through 1910 under President Theodore Roosevelt and later served two terms as governor of Pennsylvania."

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11156/1151527-503.stm#ixzz1OPZj6k67

[blue neen]

1. On edit: I forgot to mention again that Tom Corbett (Governor Gashole)

is the most crooked politician this state has seen in my lifetime.

[Divernan]

2. Aw, give the Gov a break! He's probably still on pain killers

for his "lower extremity weakness" & has to compensate by being a dickhead.

[blue neen]

3. You could be onto something there.

Hmm...

[blue neen]

4. "Only when the last tree is cut; only when the last river is polluted;

only when the last fish is caught; only then will they realize you cannot eat money"
~Cree Indian Proverb~

[Divernan]

5. Very wise words - that's going onto my favorite quotes on my FB page.