Marty Wilder 

Pithole Road. The history of the oil fields is written in its name. It’s where many Cyclone residents live, not far from where work is already underway on a 5,000-foot-deep, frack-waste disposal well.

Many of the people here have worked in the oilfield their entire life and, to be honest, that’s what scares them. They readily admit the ground beneath their feet is a “pincushion,” drilled more than once, and many wells never plugged.

This injection well has been on the drawing board since about 2020-21. It was announced publicly in the legal notices in The Bradford Era, the small print after the classified pages. Since no one complained about the proposal, the first permit was granted by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Most of the people in Cyclone only found out about this project when a letter from the Seneca Nation of Indians was left in their mailboxes. And when they complained to “our” government about getting no notification, they were told they had missed their chance.

When the residents raised hell last fall, there was a hastily arranged meeting with the state Department of Environmental Protection and operator Catalyst Energy. Residents posed many questions, but didn’t get satisfactory answers concerning vital issues.

When one resident called a couple weeks ago to check the status of the state permit, he was told … it had been granted. There was 30 days to appeal. And that’s where we are today.

The 30 days is running. At 10 a.m. Saturday a community meeting will be held at the Hilltop Firehall where organizers will talk to the people about some of the important issues at stake mostly with potential water contamination by a nasty mix of chemicals frack waste — “not your father’s (secondary recovery) brine.”

The crux of the matter is this: A whole lot of the Bradford oilfield has been perforated from years of drilling. A map of Cyclone from the 1930s is virtually covered with oil wells. Many were never plugged, creating a perfect subterranean system for frack waste to meander up through the layers of soil and mix with the underground water supply.

Anybody from Bradford will surely remember when the first wells were fracked back in the early 2000s, and two houses exploded — how people weren’t killed is a miracle — for this same reason.

And in the 1980s, Pennzoil “fracked” wells in Cyclone with a type of detergent, a new method to get more oil out of a tired oilfield. One of the men who handled the wells later found the same material … coming out of the ground about a half-mile away.

I’d like to think the Department of Environmental Protection simply wasn’t aware of these facts when they OK’d the permit.

When I was elected McKean County Commissioner I promised people as much transparency as possible. In all honesty, this is not technically a county problem. But I support the people of Cyclone on this vital issue, and will do what I can to help them.

But let me be crystal clear. I speak only for myself. I don’t speak for the county or the other commissioners. That is their right. I’m sure the three of us commissioners, over time, will agree on many things. But, like the people of Cyclone, I’m also a hilltopper and we stick together. Next time, it could be us.