Life in the Northern Tier
When Tammy and Matt Manning found a rent-to-own home in Franklin Forks, Pennsylvania in 2010, they were excited for what was to come. They had never owned their own home before. Their two daughters, three grandchildren, and Tammy’s father moved in with them.
Shortly after, WPX Energy began drilling for natural gas. Not even a year into moving into their new home, grey water came out of the kitchen faucet. Their granddaughter, Madison, whose bedroom was located directly above the kitchen sink, woke up several nights a week vomiting.
The water tested positive for high, unsafe levels of arsenic, barium, methane, and other dangerous chemicals. The Mannings are convinced this was a result of hydrofracking, a controversial process used to extract natural gas from deep in the ground.
The family could no longer drink or cook with the water supplied to their house. Showering in it was a risk, although they had no other choice. High levels of methane filled the home, so much so that they had to stop using their gas stove, for risk of explosion. They showered with the window open, even in the cold winters, so that they wouldn’t pass out.
Once a week, Matt drove across state lines to New York where he would fill plastic gallon jugs with tap water from his mother’s.
They lived like this for months, until WPX Energy began delivering water to a tank outside of their home once a day, along with two other residences in the town. While they didn’t admit fault to contaminating the family’s water, they claimed they were being good neighbors.
Despite the family’s situation, the majority of the community is favor of fracking. Gas companies looking to drill promised good-paying jobs, a surplus of clientele for local businesses from gas workers, and financial gain to landowners willing to lease their land.
The town held public meetings where the Mannings did not feel welcome. They claim they have been verbally harassed in public and tailgated to work by gas workers. Fighting to end fracking nationwide and getting WPX Energy to take responsibility for the contamination of their water became a full-time job for the Mannings.
The Manning family's rent-to-own home in Franklin Forks, PA which they moved into in November 2010. Tammy and Matt Manning said they were excited about the possibility of owning a home for their first time.
A glass of tap water is pictured in the Manning home on February 4, 2012. Shortly after the beginning of hydrofracking in the town, the family's water came out of the faucet grey, testing positive for high levels of arsenic, barium, methane, and other chemicals.
A jug is filled with tap water from Matt Manning's mother's home across the state border in New York on May 12, 2012. The family would use the jugs of water for cooking and drinking water.
Tammy Manning uses a jug of clean water to wash the hands of her granddaughter, Madison, on March 11, 2012.
Tammy Manning plugs her ears as she stands in front of a flaring gas well on November 30, 2012. Flaring, which burns off extra gas from the well, burns for two weeks and sounds like a jet engine. Over the past year, Tammy has watched her town transform since the introduction of hydrofracking.
The Manning family roasts marshmallows around a campfire behind their house as the sun goes down on May 12, 2012. During the summer, the family loves to spend time outside.
Jayden McNeilly, 3, plays with his 'Scuba Scooby' toy in a bag of contaminated water from his house in Franklin Forks, Pennsylvania on March 9, 2012. Jayden is one of the Mannings' grandchildren living with them in the home.
Tammy Manning watches the creek that flows behind their home in Franklin Forks, PA on May 12, 2012. Before hydrofracking started in the area, the Mannings would let their grandchildren swim in the creek, but stopped when they noticed the creek bubbling with what they thought was methane.
Matt Manning visits with his mom at her home across the state border in New York as he stops to fill up jugs of water to bring back to his home in Pennsylvania.
Matt Manning talks with his mother as he fills up jugs with water at her house in New York on May 13, 2012. He drives here once a week to fill jugs so that his family can have clean water to drink.
Tammy Manning, right, is comforted by her sister as she nervously anticipates the arrival of media and anti-fracking activists to tour their home and hear their story on January 17, 2013.
The site of a hydrofracking well in Franklin Forks, Pennsylvania on February 4, 2012. Since the start of hydraulic fracturing, a process used to extract natural gas from the ground, three families in the area claimed that their water was contaminated.
Matt Manning looks out his car window as he drives home from picking up jugs of clean drinking water from his mother's home in New York on May 12, 2012.
A sign encouraging gas companies to drill is left at the entrance of a property in Franklin Forks, PA on May 12, 2012. Many residents in the area support hydrofracking because of the promise of jobs, financial gains from the leasing of private land for drilling, and an increase of business from gas workers.