Community Impact
About 20 miles east of Chesapeake's Ayrview Acres site is Carrollton, Ohio, a small town in Carroll County that's growing up fast.
Chesapeake and other drilling companies have converged on Carroll County, which borders Columbiana, to expand operations in the Utica play. Louisiana, New Jersey and Pennsylvania license plates dot the village square parking lot, an unusual sight in such a rural community.
Around 1 p.m. on a Friday, a local Ponderosa Steakhouse is still bustling with activity. Since the shale gas rush took off about a year ago, the restaurant has increased business by an average of 200 to 300 customers a day, says Teresa Keane, a manager and waitress at the Carrollton Ponderosa.
"There's a lot of extra money in this town," she says while seated in a window-side booth.
Some workers at the restaurant have doubled their hours, working four days instead of two because of the rush. Keane says overall the experience has been positive.
She's hoping to eventually receive royalties from a well operating on her road. But with the good comes the bad. The drilling and transportation crews have created "a lot of dust and potholes," Keane says.
Elsewhere, environmental concerns over groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing have created a public stir.
The Environmental Protection Agency said in a draft report that it found evidence hydraulic fracturing contaminated water wells in Pavillion, Wyo. Ecana Corp., the Canadian company that fracked in the area, and lawmakers have criticized the EPA report, saying the agency's study methods were flawed.
In recent years, homeowners in several states have sued energy companies, including Chesapeake and Southwestern, alleging hydraulic fracturing has contaminated their water sources.
In 2010, 13 families from Pennsylvania's Susquehanna County sued Southwestern claiming the company contaminated their wells. Mueller says the well in question in Pennsylvania never produced gas, and Southwestern never fracked the well. As of press time, the case was still pending.
In Arkansas, residents complained their water was contaminated after Southwestern repaired a water well on federally owned property at the state's request. Mueller says the allegations have nothing to do with hydraulic fracturing and instead question the company's actions during the repair process.
Most of the public fears have more to do with misinformation than facts, Mueller contends. Nonetheless, Mueller and other industry executives say many public doubts can be eliminated through more transparency and communication.
