Community Leaders' Perspectives on Shale Development in the New Albany Shale

ABSTRACTShale development, which uses the controversial energy extraction technique of hydraulic fracturing, is on the rise in America, with industries recently investigating the New Albany shale play in southern Illinois and western Kentucky. We ask: what do community leaders in this region think about shale development generally, and how do they come to their decisions? To answer these questions, we interviewed eighteen community leaders, twelve of whom were proponents of shale development. We show proponents speak on shale development as a positive by claiming 1) any jobs are beneficial for the community, 2) shale development is not different from other forms of extractive industry, and 3) information that criticizes shale development or hydraulic fracturing is untrustworthy. Proponents come to these ideas by conceiving of their leadership roles strictly as economic leaders, and by pointing to their personal history in their communities to best know what development their communities need.Shale development, which consists of extracting natural gas through hydraulic fracturing (commonly called fracking) is on the rise in America with corporations and energy companies reaching out to more parts of the country where naturally occurring gas or oil shale plays exist. Even with recent lower costs of conventional oil energy, thus reducing the monetary value of shale gas and oil itself, unconventional gas development is still a major focus of extractive industries (Jacquet 2014; Theodori et al. 2014).While scientists undertake more evaluations of the relative safety and sustainability of hydraulic fracturing compared with more conventional energy extraction methods such as coal mining or oil drilling, companies have begun establishing shale development plants across North America in several plays like the Bakken in North Dakota and Montana, Eagle Ford and Permian Basin in Texas, and Marcellus in New York and Pennsylvania. Recently, energy companies have focused on extracting energy from a new shale play: the New Albany, in southern Illinois and western Kentucky.While this development is exciting for energy companies, landowners who may gain income from leasing mineral rights to their land, and individuals concerned with a potentially more sustainable energy source in America, there have been many problems associated with shale development generally, and hydraulic fracturing particularly (Jacquet 2014; Jenner and Lamadrid 2013). Environmentally, issues include the extraction process's use of toxic chemicals possibly contaminating soil and water (Finkel, Hays, and Law 2013), improperly treated wastewater flowing into and permanently damaging existing water supplies needed for farming and drinking (Kargbo, Wilhelm and Campbell 2010), and the fact that the drilling process itself uses millions of gallons of water per fracture (Soeder and Kappel 2009), which might deplete small towns' local water supplies. Socially, communities that depend on extractive industries have higher rates of unemployment, instability, and crime (Jacquet 2014). Communities involved with shale development have reported higher rates of crime, increased road usage by semi-trucks, and lower levels of quality of life (Boudet et al. 2013). These issues indicate that there are both negative and positive consequences associated with shale development, which must be weighed by governmental community leaders.Acknowledging these issues, we ask: what do community leaders in the New Albany shale think of shale development? Furthermore, how do community leaders come to their conclusions? In this piece, we present findings on interviews with eighteen community leaders in the New Albany shale play, with twelve self-declared proponents of shale development. We find three themes used by these proponents to back their stance: 1) any jobs are beneficial for the community, 2) shale development is not different from other forms of extractive industry they have had in the past, and, perhaps most important, 3) they cannot trust any information that criticizes shale development. …