Anatomy of a Gas Well: What Happened When a Well Was Drilled in a National Forest

A new report [1] by the U.S. Forest Service offers one of the most detailed accounts yet of how natural gas drilling can affect a forest – in this case the Fernow Experimental Forest, deep in the mountains of West Virginia. The report traces the construction and drilling of a single well and an accompanying pipeline on a sliver of the 4,700 acre forest that federal scientists have been studying for nearly 80 years. It found that the project felled or killed about 1,000 trees, damaged roads, eroded the land and—perhaps most important—permanently removed a small slice of the forest from future scientific research. The report said the drilling didn’t appear to have a substantial effect on groundwater quality. The scientists did not monitor the forest’s most sensitive ecosystems, including extensive caves, and did not evaluate the operation’s impact on wildlife. The authors also did not test for any of the chemicals added to drilling and hydraulic fracturing fluids. The report, and the well in question, hints at a larger story of the tensions that have emerged as drilling expands across federal lands in the eastern United States...more