Jaime Frederick
Ohio Statehouse Rally
January 10, 2012
My
name is Jaime Frederick and I’m from Coitsville, Ohio.
Shortly after moving into my home in Coitsville outside
of Youngstown, Ohio, 3 years ago, I began to get
seriously ill. I started vomiting on a regular basis and
had intense abdominal pains everyday. After numerous
trips to six different doctors, and several emergency
room visits, test revealed that my gall bladder had
completely failed. No gallstones, it had just stopped
working, and no one could tell me why. I had my gall
bladder taken out but continue to have what seems to be
a never ending intestinal flu. It became so bad, that I
soon developed an infection in my intestine, as large as
a grapefruit, that ate through to the outside of my
skin.
When
I was finally admitted to the hospital, doctors said
that I would have been dead in a few days if I had not
come in when I did. They were baffled, and could only
tell me this should not be happening to a healthy
30-year-old woman, and that this condition is typically
only found in third world countries. Over the course of
the next two years, I underwent a series of five more
surgeries in an attempt to repair the damage that had
been caused by the infection. I continued to get
violently ill, and had elevated kidney and liver
numbers, kidney infections, pain throughout my body,
trouble breathing, rapid heartbeat, and many other
unexplained symptoms.
I
continue to search for answers, seeing 18 different
doctors in total, who continue to misdiagnose and
scratch their heads. Some told me that I was just
stressed out, and that when you are stressed out you
dehydrate and that I should drink as much water as
possible. I know now that this advice nearly killed me.
As we burned through our savings with thousands of
dollars of medical bills, the answers never came as to
why this was happening to me.
It
wasn’t until a few months ago when the convoys of trucks
and drilling equipment began rolling down our once
lonely, quiet road, did the answers to my medical
mystery unfold. The neighboring property owner, who
lives out of town, had signed a gas lease before we even
moved there, and never bothered to tell us. Out of the
62 acres signed off by my neighbor, that the best place
to drill would be right by my home, about as close as
the law would allow them.
As we
scrambled to learn all that we could about what was
happening to us, what rights we had, or didn’t, and how
to stop it, we discovered that a special type of water
test, a tier 3 test, would have to be done to establish
a baseline before the drilling began, and that we would
have to pay for it ourselves. The cheapest test offered
was $500. We managed to get the test done only two days
before they started drilling. Our baseline tests
revealed high levels of contaminants that are a result
of the hydraulic fracturing and drilling process, such
as high levels of barium, strontium, toluene and several
others that I will not try to pronounce. The mystery was
now solved. This was why I had been so sick for so long,
and my dogs as well. At the time when I was most sick, I
was drinking over 2 gallons of this water unfiltered
each day.
As we
dug deeper, we discovered that several wells had already
been drilled and were tucked quietly away in the woods
that surrounded our home and other properties. This was
never disclosed to us when we bought the house. My
husband never got sick because he hardly ever drank the
water at home. I always bugged him to drink more water,
and I’m glad now that like most husbands, he never
listened to me. It’s hard to say which one of the 10
wells within a half-mile, 15 within a mile, actually
caused the contamination. It only takes one bad well to
poison a water table that can sometimes stretch out for
over a mile. In some places that’s a lot of homes. As
bad as this all sounds, the worst has yet to come.
Living through the drilling and fracking phase of the
most recent well was a truly terrifying experience. We
were given no notice whatsoever as to what was about to
happen to us, and had no where to evacuate to with our 3
dogs and cats. We felt like we were trapped in someone’s
idea of a sick joke. 24-7 nonstop, we were subjected to
such unbelievable levels of noise that you can only
understand if you’ve heard it for yourself. It would
have been more peaceful to live on an airport runway. We
couldn’t sleep for days at a time, and when we did it
was only short naps in between explosions. We tried
using earplugs, covered by these headphones, while
listening to the radio, and could still plainly hear it.
Worse yet, we could feel it, as a constant vibration
through the house. That was just the drilling. The
actual fracking lasted about 3 days. Now that I get to
live through Youngstown’s injection well earthquakes, I
can tell you that is what it is similar to. Dishes
rattling in the cupboards, pictures falling off the
wall, cracking sounds in the basement. Like so many of
you, I’m sure, I love my dogs with all my heart. I’ve
never seen them so terrified, and hope I never will
again. They cowered together in a corner, shaking
uncontrollably for days. They would not go outside and
they would not eat. I was unable to do anything to help
them other than put a radio near them in hopes of
masking the noise and calming them down.
The
gas storage tanks, and radioactive toxic waste tanks… I
refuse to call it brine, I’m sorry, because that was
just a lie, that is not what it is. These tanks have
been placed closer to my home than the well itself. They
are right outside my bedroom window and just uphill from
a fresh artesian spring on my property. The overflow
hose that comes out of the radioactive toxic waste tank
goes directly onto the ground and this is permitted
because they get to lie and call it brine. I would not
soak my pickles or my turkey in this. They are also
permitted to bury to toxic wastewater pit on my
neighbor’s property, just uphill from our home.
The
gas storage tank is now hooked up and under high
pressure. It regularly releases the pressure, putting
the toxic fumes into the air and makes a lot of noise.
It will do this for at least 6 more months. A smell
similar to rotten eggs and diesel fumes hangs heavy in
the air. ODNR tells me it is perfectly safe, and that I
am in more danger breathing in the air in a parking lot.
First of all, I don’t live in a parking lot. And
secondly, when I do park my car in a parking lot it is
not covered in an oily mist like now falls over our
property and is seen easily on our house and car
windows. I’m sure this is perfectly safe too, right ODNR?
Everyone asks me why I am not more upset with my
neighbor and why I don’t sue him. I tell them because
not only do we have no rights, but that I feel that he
was taken advantage of by BoCor gas. They forced him to
sign a lease when he was intoxicated, with no notary
present. And they told him it would be no bigger
operation than drilling a water well, and that the only
thing left behind would be the size of a garbage can and
surrounded by trees that they would plant. All lies, and
there are still no trees. They also buried the
radioactive toxic waste pit in the exact location where
he told them he planning to build a home to retire in.
BoCor also managed to rip him off to the tune of
$300,000 in acreage payments. He said that if he knew
then what he knows now, that he never would have signed
and that he is very sorry. They have already destroyed
the land that has been in his family for generations,
dating back to the early 1800’s, and they are just
getting started.
Our
little house, in the middle of the woods, will soon be
in the middle of a toxic wasteland, as they prepare to
cut down the remaining trees to put in the pipelines and
compressor stations that will eventually connect the
wells. Our property value has been reduced from $125,000
to nothing, overnight. 47 wells, including injection
wells, already cover the 12 square miles that is
Coitsville, even surrounding the wildlife preserve.
We
have already had a blowout of at least one well, a
chemical spill, and a tear in a waste pit liner. And
again, they are only getting started. I haven’t retested
the water since the last well was drilled, but I have a
feeling it didn’t make it cleaner. Even if I wanted to
have it retested, we have nothing left, having spent
every penny on water testing, water filtration
equipment, medical bills, and renovating a home we
thought we were going to raise a family in. We now check
our faucets daily with a lighter, and we’re still
hopeful because it hasn’t ignited, yet. I am feeling
much better these days, and so are my dogs since we
stopped drinking the water. My liver and kidney numbers
have improved, though much damage has been done. I have
developed kinetic tremors in my hands as a result of the
neurological side effects of some of the chemicals.
But
the worst side effect caused by the damage is my
inability to safely carry a child, without the risk of
hemorrhage or even death. Even if I could somehow still
give birth, knowing the high risk of birth defects
caused by the chemicals I drank. I will never take that
risk. At the time when I was most sick, drinking the
most water, I lay on the bathroom floor, night after
night, thinking I would surely be dead soon. Throwing up
until the blood vessels in my eyes and cheeks were
burst. At that time, I did not know what fracking was,
or that I was being deliberately poisoned. But I do now.
And I
have a message for you Governor Kasic, and you Mr.
Gasman, you may have taken my safety and my property
value, you may have taken my gall bladder, and you may
have taken my ability to have children, but you will not
take my voice. And I will not stop until you stop. We
will not stop until you stop.
Thank
you. |