Marcellus Canaries Are Alive and Thriving

By Dr. Dennis Wydra

I grew up in the Mount Carmel area in the heart of the Anthracite Coal Region and I always remember my grandfather raising canaries in his home. I always enjoyed hearing these birds sing, but I noticed he was always giving them away and raising new ones. One day when I was four, he said, “Den we take these canaries into the deep mines with us and we are always glad they sing. When they stop singing we get worried about gas in the mines. Every morning when we go down, we check on our canaries. They help keep the miners alive.”

Today we have a new type of canary for our Marcellus gas wells. Paranoia is running rampant that the new gas wells will pollute our water, our wells, and make us sick or die. After doing a little research I soon discovered that every one of the Pennsylvania Fish Commission hatcheries are located in the Marcellus Fairway and they are doing just fine. I began teaching in McKean County in 1965 and we had gas and oil wells everywhere, but I enjoyed some of the best trout fishing in my life while listening to these old wells pump away. Actually, northwest Pennsylvania now has almost 500,000 gas and oil wells including abandoned, existing, and new ones and you will find the finest trout fishing in all of Pennsylvania in this huge gas and oil field. Our Marcellus Canaries are now called trout and they are alive and thriving wherever these gas wells are dilled.

Believe it or not, if water gets into a gas well at the early stages of drilling, it ruins the well. So water is actually an enemy of gas drillers. Extreme caution has been used and continues to be used by the drilling industry to protect their resources AND ours. When I discovered that all of the Pennsylvania Fish Commission’s hatcheries are in the Marcellus Fairway, I began to wonder about the Sportsmen’s Clubs that have cooperative trout nurseries. I soon discovered that there are at least two Sportsmen’s Clubs each raising over 30,000 trout fingerlings into nice legal trout for stocking in local streams and both of these clubs are raising their trout on ground leased to shallow gas wells and/or Marcellus wells. One club netted over $150,000 just to lease the ground and the other has their nursery on someone else’s property that was leased for the past 9 years. Both clubs are confident that their trout raising days will continue because of their confidence in the water safety records of the gas drilling companies. One nursery is about to see some nearby wells dug in a few weeks and the other nursery has a number of pumping wells very close to the nursery. Not a single trout was lost to Marcellus drilling.

Can you name these sportsmen’s clubs? I will give you a hint, the trout are so healthy on these grounds, that one club recently had criminals enter their grounds at night and steal 2,000 adult trout just before the annual Kids Trout Derby. Next issue we will tell you… the rest of the story! Dr. Bolgiano will be back with us for Part II.

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