The celebrity tour of Dimock has been in and out of the news for the past few weeks. But, with all these natural gas impacts the celebs reported seeing, what about the many things that never even got a mention?

It’s been a couple of weeks now since some well known celebrities and their entourage  dropped into Susqu... for a tour of natural gas impacts on the area. We were honestly going to let the memory of the tour dwindle down and go the way of Promised Land, but then the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter decided to use the words of Yoko and her attempt to give credibility to activists like Vera Scroggins and Craig Stevens, as “proof” the process of developing natural resources in Susquehanna County is devastating the area. One trip talking with a small handful of people is a far cry from the overall picture of what natural gas is and isn’t doing to the county or the region as a whole, so let’s talk about what the group did and didn’t get to see while they were here.

Yoko’s Sierra Club Letter

In Yoko’s letter to Sierra Club members she discusses meeting people who’s “health, homes, and lives have been forever changed because of fracking,” but she was only referring to two families and a couple of activists from the area and one Ferrari driving woman from Bucks County. It was a bit surprising she even listed, or the Sierra Club allowed, one of those activists to be named after the spectacle she made of herself during the tour. Watch for yourself.

Further, that’s not even one percent of the population. Let’s take a moment to view how the other 99 plus percent of the county is being impacted by the natural gas development around them.

Susquehanna County Getting Much Needed Hospital

We often discuss the jobs that have come to Susquehanna County, such as those provided by local businessman Adam Diaz, and the royalty monies that are helping to put money back into the local economy quite often, but what about the other benefits seen locally?

It is no secret the county has been in desperate need of a new hospital for decades, long before Marcellus Shale or natural gas became household terms discussed around the dinner table. It’s also not a secret the county had been trying for years to get the funds needed to build one with little to no success. Yoko discusses health as an important factor, but what is more important to a region than the means to receive adequate health care?

It’s something many of us take for granted with the Geisinger’s, Susquehanna’s, Guthrie’s and other excellent health systems in the area and doesn’t even enter the radar of celebrities who have access to the very best health care money can buy. Yoko herself can surely attest to this given her very public hospital stays during her pregnancies in the 1960s and 1970s, and her seemingly great health for an 80 year old woman.  Studies time and again show access to adequate health care is a key factor in improving the health of a community; the most important one, in fact, which is why health is improving in the Barnett Shale region where there is a longer track record.

Read more at: http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/natural-gas-celeb-reality-t...