Feds probing Chesapeake drilling jobs in W.Va. after citizens filmed activity they considered illegal

Chesapeake Energy Corp., the second-largest natural gas company in the U.S., said last week that the federal government has started an investigation of alleged criminal activity at its West Virginia drilling sites. It's an investigation that may have never started if not for three Wetzel County residents: Ed Wade Jr., Bill Hughes and Rose Baker. They started building a case against the company after becoming "fed up" with truck traffic, toxic fumes and polluted or filled creeks, reports Mike Soraghan of Energy & Environment News. The trio filmed Chesapeake's operations, which they considered illegal. (Wade stands in a creek Chesapeake was forced to restore)

"The community's biggest defense is a camera," Wade told Soraghan. "They don't know where I'm going to show up. They don't know who is going to show up where." The Environmental Protection Agency took notice and sent a team to Wetzel County in September 2010. The agency's Philadelphia office "hit Chesapeake at least eight times under the Clean Water Act for wetland violations," Soraghan reports, and they were "aimed right at the top," at company CEO Aubrey McClendon. The matter got little media attention until the company announced the U.S. Department of Justice is leading the investigation at three Chesapeake sites, noting it believed the investigation would warrant fines more than $100,000. It maintains the issues happened two years ago.

Soraghan sums it up: "People on both sides of the issue say some of the things Chesapeake is charged with doing have been common practice in the rural area for years. But the company's critics say there's a big difference between occasionally driving a pickup in a creek and flattening a waterfall for heavy truck traffic. And the criminal investigation indicates someone thinks there's evidence the company knew the activities violated the law."

Wade and his neighbors said they were just as upset with the state's Department of Environmental Protection, which they say allowed Chesapeake to destroy their property. They weren't satisfied with response from the department, so they started calling and sending photos to the EPA regional office. "When citizens can't get responsiveness, they call whoever they can," Hughes said. When DEP chief Randy Huffman learned of the EPA visit, he said he was "flabbergasted" that the company "got away with this." (Read more)