The Simple Life, Complicated
In western Pennsylvania, an Amish community whose pastoral way of life hasn’t changed in 150 years is about to be confronted with industrialization on a massive scale, due to an influx of natural gas drilling. Read about the conflict in Elizabeth Royte’s story, “Fracking the Amish.”
The borough of New Wilmington is home to one of the largest communities of Old Order Amish in the country. These Amish eschew modern technology and industrialization. But their fields, schools, and farmhouses also sit atop the Marcellus shale, a deep formation that contains tight pockets of natural gas that can only be released only by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.