Help Keep West Deer Families Safe

Health, safety, and wellbeing are the most important things to any family. In the little community of West Deer, PA, these things are being threatened by Oil and Gas  for multiple families, including my own.


My husband and I bought our home in July of 2019. About a month before this, we found out that we were having our 2nd child, a little boy who was born in January 2020. Currently, we are awaiting the arrival of baby girl in August! The home we bought isn’t perfect, we knew it would need some serious TLC to turn it into a place we wanted to raise our family for years to come, however, that was worth it for the area. West Deer is a beautiful community with a great school district, and we are situated by 100 acres of beautiful woods. We don’t own any of that wooded property, however, we are able to use it for hiking or biking; other residents ride their quads and dirt bikes through it. It’s wonderfully serene in the evenings. We were under the impression that these woods would not ever be developed due to the coal mines that run under and throughout the entire area, including under all the homes. It was perfect.

 
Shortly after we closed and moved in, we received a letter from another West Deer family informing us that the township was looking over applications for 2 well pads to be placed in our area. This wouldn’t have been an issue except the one pad is slated to be 650 feet from our home. 650 feet! To put that in perspective, that is less than 2 football fields; it is about 1/10 of a mile; in a straight line, it’s less than a 2-minute walk. Needless to say, our hearts sank. We were overwhelmed with a sense of dread of what could happen to our children, fur children and us through exposure to all of the emissions from fracking, the damage to their growth from never being able to get proper sleep due to noise and vibrations; the worst thought of all is the very real potential for a catastrophic, explosive event. Not only does that potential just come with Oil and Gas in general, but the company is knowingly drilling into mines flooded with acid water. A recent study shows that the casings used for fracking will begin to fail within 7-10 days, when drilling through acid water mines. They are quickly eaten away by the acid water which will leave gas leaking through and out of the ground, building up to the point where explosion is almost inevitable. Being so close to this well pad, there is no way my family and I or our neighbors (and there are quite a few) would survive. Their “evacuation” plan means nothing to us; we are gone. That sweet little face you see in the banner never gets a chance at life.


I am asking for donations to help pay legal fees that have and will be accrued in our fight against these pads being built. Myself along with the help of others in the area, have formed a group known as C.R.O.W.D, Concerned Residents of West Deer. CROWD is a grassroots, unincorporated community group of West Deer Township residents committed to the health and safety of our neighborhoods. This group was formed to share information on the Dionysus and Leto deep well pad applications and to aid our township in. Status updates on the township’s approval process can be found online at https://concernedresidents.weebly.com/ / or check out and join our Facebook page!( CROWD Facebook group )We, and a couple of non-profit organizations, have secured the aid of one of the foremost Oil and Gas attorneys that has proven time and again that he will work to help the little guys, but that of course comes with a price. No amount is too big to maintain the health safety and wellbeing of our families. Please help support this cause to keep mine and many other families safe from Oil and Gas!!!

 

Thank you!