Debunking the Misleading Claims of the Oil and Gas Industry

Dr. Randi Pokladnik and her husband Joel are long-time OVEC members. Randi is from eastern Ohio and has lived for 59 years in the strip-mined coal counties of Jefferson and Harrison. Unfortunately, deep shale gas fracking activities have become the latest way to destroy these beautiful areas.

Randi has been involved with environmental issues for most of her life. One big cause she worked on was trying to stop the WTI hazardous waste incinerator that moved into East Liverpool, OH.

Randi visited Kayford Mountain a few times when Larry Gibson was alive, so she’s has witnessed the devastation known as mountaintop removal coal mining. She carried out her doctorate research in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky on ginseng, generating articles such as Can Woods Cultivated Ginseng Programs Help Preserve Mesophytic Forests and Provide Economic Development for Rural Communities? Some of you may have seen her presentation titled Another Perspective on Mountaintop Removal: Ginseng Poaching from the Next Generation, which she presented at 2008 Appalachia Studies Association Conference at Marshall University. Or you may have seen this article she wrote, which went viral on EcoWatch.

American Ginseng: Mountaintop removal coal mining can wipe huge swaths of ginseng habitat.

Randi has taught both high school and college students. She’s grown quite concerned about the misinformation that oil and gas companies spew out during teacher professional development workshops.

“I don’t think many teachers realize that this oil and gas development will come at an enormous cost to the ecosystems and people living in the regions,” she says.

To help counteract the misinformation campaign, Randi has prepared this document, Debunking the misleading claims of the oil and gas industry, which she first shared at Wellness and Water III, held in Charleston in October, 2014.

Thanks, Randi! Please share Randi’s paper with fracktivists and your neighbors.

A Marcellus shale drilling operation underway in Doddridge County, WV. Photo by VS.