Toad Hall Times Naturally

Consider yourself invited to join the eviction resistance at Pennsylvania fracking site

A week into the resident-led occupation of a mobile home park in Jersey Shore, PA, the following message has been circulated by the fine folks with Occupy Well Street. Basically, it’s on…

Save Riverdale: Urgent Call for Support

“I was here to protect my home.  Within a week I realized why the hell would I protect a house with water I can’t drink.  It’s still about the house, but it’s more about this land and that water. As long as you’re willing to stand, stay here, and bring more: this isn’t over yet” –Riverdale Resident

For 7 days, Riverdale Mobile Home Community and our group of volunteers have impeded the construction of a water withdrawal site on the Susquehanna River

Global warming or not, there’s one thing we can all agree on: it’s summer. Summer is a time to roll in your favorite patch of grass, or if you’re an activist, then summer is a time to shake signs to protect that grass. This summer’s activism schedule is brought to you by humans who know the truth about high volume unconventional slickwater hydraulic fracturing–a.k.a. “fracking” for short. (Follow link for more fracking info.)

This isn’t going to be your normal summer of activism. Natural gas may have fallen in price, and Aubrey McClendon might be having some “issues“– but fracktivists are bright enough to realize that just because Aubrey needs to hire a tiny little fiddle player these days, this only means others will vie for his acreage… so they can frack it. And we all know that both Romney and Obama have “Drill, Baby, Drill” mentalities.

Information compiled fromEcoWatch

The Riverdale Mobile Home Park in Jersey Shore, PA is under major threat of eviction due to plans to build a 3 million gallon PER DAY water withdrawal site at the property to service natural gas drilling. Beginning June 1st,  Aqua America, a company partnered with Penn Virginia Resources (PVR) wants to begin their work, but first they need to displace over thirty families in the park’s tightly-knit community.

Residents of Riverdale, joined by supporters, are blockading access to a mobile home community that is facing imminent displacement at the hands of Aqua America.  Aqua America supplies natural gas drillers in the Marcellus Shale region. The blockade was launched to halt Aqua America’s plans to begin construction of a withdrawal facility for water from the Susquehanna River to be used in fracking operations. Aqua America recently purchased the entire Riverdale mobile home unit to be used as a withdrawal…

Over the last month I have seen more of the transformed landscape that was once Pennsylvania and is now turned gas fields than I can even understand, or fully explain. I will only attempt a synopsis of the journey.  I visited 12 different places that all had unique stories and situations, but had one thing in common: gas development has changed their lives, and not for the better.

I first went to Butler County, then Washington County, Fayette County and all over the Moshannon Forest. My mission was to see, first hand, what living in the gas fields is like for some people and to assist some of these families with independent air testing. I had already met at least 4 families that have lost their water, in Butler alone. I know that there are at least 12. Their situation is still dire, still haphazard.  Although, many kind citizens have…