There goes the neighborhood. If you've ever wondered what happens when valuable natural resources happen to be in your backyard, the short version is it's not good.
People who live in rural areas have little power to protest when industrial extraction replaces the hills and hollows of their paradise.
They fought as long as they could. Surrounded on all sides, they finally had to leave.
The real kicker: The gas company says they've only done this to 6% of the places they've got their eye on. The other 94% has people, and homes, and lives that will all get turned upside down — and they don't even know it. Is your backyard next?
I don't know Annie and Jon, but they are friends of friends. Their abandoned farm is only 16 miles from my dad's home, where I grew up. Every time I go home, this is the conversation I hear: How could we possibly leave? How can we possibly stay?
Thanks to my friend Tina DelPrete for posting this video, from "In the Hills and Hollows," a series of short films on fossil fuel extraction in West Virginia.
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