Please in My Back Yard: Risk, Reward, and Inequality in Central Pennsylvania's "Gas Rush"

• In Event: 410 - Thematic Session. Hard Times and Environmental Inequality

Abstract

Based on an 8-month ethnography of how the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas is affecting rural communities in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, this paper complicates the typical “environmental inequality” story in several revealing ways. Lycoming County residents are not virtuous victims involuntarily exposed to toxins by rapacious industries. Rather than mobilizing a NIMBY campaign against fracking, many have adopted a PIMBY (please in my back yard) frame, inviting a possibly toxic industry into their communities and sharing in the rewards as well as the risks. It is not the case that poor residents are excluded from the profits generated by this industry; rather, accidents of geography and geology created a sort of “fracking lottery” in which many reap modest gains and some benefit substantially. I argue that this dynamic applies to a variety of “environmental justice” cases and forces us to consider the willful and intentional complicity of residents in creating the local conditions for toxic risk. That does not mean that issues of power and inequality are moot. A number of leaseholders I befriended seemed unaware of the details of their contracts and felt that they misjudged the risk that fracking poses to their land and personal health, revealing the capacity of energy firms to exploit information asymmetries and the vulnerability of folks desperate to hold onto their mortgages and hardscrabble farms. This raises important questions about collective action and risk perception. I ask why it is that so few residents mobilized—or even harbored resentment—against energy firms when they felt that promises were not kept. And I argue that disparities in lease signing bonuses and royalties have introduced new forms of local social inequality that traditional environmental justice frames might overlook.

Author

• Colin Jerolmack, New York University