Jessica Towey and Claire Bachman
9/15/2017
Working Title: FRACK THAT: The Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing in Tioga County Pennsylvania
Description & Mission/Goals:
Hydraulic fracturing is a technique developed to stimulate oil production from wells or extract natural gas. More recently, fracking has been used to extract oil and natural gas from reservoirs in places where it was not present before. Fracking is done after a well is drilled through the ground and large volumes of sand or water are pressurized and injected. Fracking was developed in the 1940s in order to stimulate oil production from reservoirs that were no longer productive. The conflict we are exploring is fracking in Tioga County, which began in April 2009. The main issues we are concerned with deal with community life, farming, economy, environmental impacts, and legality. Our conflict has made an impact, both positive and negative, on this community. As this is an ongoing conflict, the website will allow for another source of information for audience members to learn about the impacts of fracking in this area, as well as provide possible conflict resolution strategies. If the website provides adequate information for conflict resolution in our area, we hope that it may also provide guidance for other communities experiencing the same conflict.
Website Layout:
Page Title: Hydraulic Fracturing: What is it?
Introduction explaining what fracking is and the importance of it
Page Title: History
General history about fracking; start with origin, narrow down to Northern PA, then narrow further to Tioga County, PA
Page Title: First Hand Accounts
Personal interviews (as per permission from University IRB committee) conducted with faculty and community members; interview with Jimmy Guignard- a professor on campus who wrote a book on fracking in this community
Page Title: Scientific Research
As per permission from each individual involved- we know many students on campus have conducted their required senior research on a topic related to fracking in this area. We hope to be able to publish some student research to provide further evidence of the effect of fracking in our area.
Page Title: Environmental Impacts
Description of the benefits as well as negative impacts of fracking in this area or in general
Page Title: The effect on the Economy/Community
Description of the benefits and negative impacts of fracking in our community as pertaining to the economy, general community structure, and farming
Page Title: Benefits of Fracking
Possibly talk to a fracking company in the area to get their side of the story/interview them
Page Title: Laws and Regulations
A list of main laws and regulations on fracking; also include fines that have been issued in this area
Page Title: References/Bibliography
Theme & Layout:
We plan to use pictures that we take from fracking sites near us, if we are able to access these sites. Hopefully, we will be able to make creative backgrounds with these pictures. We also plan on having different tabs/pages on the website so that each section is easy to find. We hope that this layout allows our audience to find the information they are seeking in an appropriate amount of time. Our plan is to have a combination of visual representations as well as information presented in paragraphs to cater to any audience that may view our site. Through the use of various colors and legible (but fun) fonts, we hope that the design is visually pleasing to our audience. We will also incorporate timelines and maps to show visuals of the information that is presented in hopes that providing visual representations will be a very easy way for our audience to learn about our topic.
References:
Schultz, Aarik. Hydraulic Fracturing and Natural Gas Drilling. Nova Science Publishers, 2012, New York, 2-23.
Guignard, James. Pedaling the Sacrifice Zone. Texas A&M University Press, 2015, Texas.