Grave reservations: Drilling beneath cemeteries is a deal too far
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Cemeteries are hallowed ground. They are quiet, green and peaceful -- befitting their use as the final resting place for the earthly remains of hundreds, often thousands, of souls. These tranquil grounds are not just for the dead, but perhaps even more for the living, many of whom return to mourn, to plant, to remember.
That's why it comes as a surprise that some local cemeteries have entered into leases with natural gas drilling companies that may one day seek to tap the Marcellus Shale reserves a mile or more below.
An article in Sunday's Post-Gazette by staff writer Janice Crompton reported that the Catholic Cemeteries Association signed a five-year lease in 2008 with Huntley & Huntley, which specializes in urban gas drilling and has leased the rights to 10,990 acres in Allegheny County.
More than 1,200 of the company's acres are scattered across 11 cemeteries belonging to the association in Allegheny and Washington counties. The largest of those cemeteries are Calvary, with 200 acres, in the city's Hazelwood section and Queen of Heaven, with 195 acres, in Peters. (Pittsburgh prohibits gas drilling and Peters Township bars it on sites under 40 acres.)
No doubt other cemeteries in Pennsylvania, with their own vast acreage, have leases with gas drillers.
Annabelle McGannon, executive director of the Catholic Cemeteries Association, said that despite the lease there are no immediate plans for drilling at any of its properties. Even if there were, the association would be "in complete control over the location ... which would never be permitted within the developed sections of any cemetery."
That may be, but a drilling rig and its accompanying truck traffic, even in a cemetery's undeveloped section, would be obtrusive, noisy and unsightly for those coming to pay their respects. So much for any semblance of peaceful repose.
It also would pose the same level of disruption for residents nearby.
We have decried in this space the hooligans who rip out grave markers and the graffiti criminals who deface tombstones. But drilling for natural gas under sacred ground would be vandalism of a different sort. And all for a few pieces of silver.
First Published August 25, 2011 12:00 am
