Tiny Pennsylvania Land Trust Is Tempted by Marcellus Shale Gas Riches

Editor's Note: Some laud natural gas as cleaner burning, home-grown energy — a "bridge" fuel to a renewable future. But others fear the environmental costs of the industry's newest extraction technique — a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing or fracking — are too high. SolveClimate News reporter Elizabeth McGowan traveled to Northeastern Pennsylvania in late March to find out how this quest for energy is affecting the landscape and the people who call it home. This is the first in a multi-part series.

TUNKHANNOCK, Pa.—Paul Lumia tugs at his toboggan cap while striding across a meadow dusted with the remnants of a late spring snow, then sloshes through pockets of standing water that would have been coated with ice a few days prior.

It's there, while seated on a striking stone wall — the artistic legacy of a long-ago farmer — that he recounts a story of irony and temptation.

As executive director of the North Branch Land Trust, Lumia earns his paycheck protecting the natural heritage of his native Northeastern Pennsylvania in perpetuity. Thus far, the tiny nonprofit organization has conserved 11,000-plus acres.

And the directors on his governing board knew they could easily more than double those holdings in a heartbeat with income drawn from unleashing the divisive energy resource that lurks thousands of feet below the copse of yet-to-leaf-out oaks, maples and beeches reclaiming fallow farm fields behind the stone wall.

Lumia is sitting in the midst of the land trust's Howland Preserve. The 667-acre wildlife sanctuary in agriculture-heavy Wyoming County's Washington Township rests atop what's known as the Marcellus Shale.

For gas exploration and drilling companies, it's sacred ground. They covet the deeply buried ancient formation because geologists claim the potential energy stored in the sprawling rock layer repositions the Keystone State as the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.

It's a remnant of a mighty old ocean bed, created from the flotsam and jetsam of animal and plant life that thrived on a very different looking planet some 390 million years ago.

Within the last year, one of those gas companies asked to lease acreage on the preserve to harvest natural gas via a relatively new technique that combines horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing.

Howard Preserve, atop the Marcellus Shale in Northeastern PennsylvaniaLumia's conservative back-of-the-envelope calculations reveal that his nonprofit — with an annual budget hovering near $300,000 — could have raked in at least $3 million from just the initial lease.

Ballpark estimates of the ensuing royalties could have showered the land trust with an embarrassment of riches. How much? At the bare minimum, $15 million to $20 million; and significantly more if the shale is a "gusher."

"With that sort of capacity, there are tons of projects we could do," he says, listing opportunities such as acquiring choice properties by purchasing expensive development rights, and bumping up the number of staffers he supervises from three to six. "It would be quite a pot of cash."

He pauses. Thinking.

"Believe me," he says, a brief smile creeping across his lips, "our board went through a lot of back and forth."

The dilemma offered a conundrum, a mini-lesson in conservation ethics.

One side of a divided board insisted the answer was a no-brainer "yes" because the deal would allow them to speed up their charge of preserving and restoring parcels that might otherwise become subdivisions. Others were adamantly opposed to "doing business with the enemy," afraid such a risky endeavor would repel donors and be antithetical to their mission.  And, a few middle-of-the-roaders wanted to talk it out.

Ultimately, the 17-member board opted for the wait-and-see approach.