He Said I Was a Fracking Heiress. I Went to West Virginia to Find Out.

For all the mystery shrouding the world of fracking, the process is fairly straightforward. Drills bore holes in the earth to depths around one-mile and then highly-pressurized water, sand and other chemicals are shot into those openings. Frac sand particles are uniform and smaller than most beach sand, which means they can prop open the millions of microscopic fissures caused by drilling in underground shale and allow natural gas to flow up and out.

But mysteries do remain. There is little to no accurate information about exactly what chemicals are used in fracking, or how harmful they may be to humans or the planet. Even Turak, whose career is devoted to this industry, does not know for sure and cannot compel oil and gas companies to disclose the chemicals they’re using in the deals they make with landowners. But what is clear is that the small particles of frac sand are extremely dangerous to inhale and equally difficult to avoid if you are near them. Despite widespread agreement in the scientific community about fracking’s health and environmental risks, from water contamination to public health concerns, the energy industry maintains this activity is safe, when proper regulatory guardrails are in place.

The heavy explosives used to create the holes and fissures also create instability in the earth, leading to erosion and even earthquakes, like the twelve 2011 earthquakes that rocked the area around a fracking site in Youngstown, Ohio — a region that had not ever experienced a quake since such activity was observed and recorded, beginning in 1776.

My general hunch, that fracking was problematic, was correct, but I didn’t judge the people who are profiting from it. Smith, who is perhaps preternaturally easygoing, is untroubled by her situation, including the fact that she won’t drink her own tap water, and appreciates the funds she gets every few years. Clark, the cattle rancher, created an education foundation with a percentage of his proceeds. Having grown up in the area, he’d seen West Virginia’s poverty and its struggles with educational attainment his entire life. “I have tried to say, OK, I’ve complained enough about what’s not right. And I feel I should be doing something. This is what I’ve devoted my retirement to.”

The counties served by his Clark Opportunity Foundation have about 1,015 high school students, and more than 400 of them are now enrolled in college-level classes the foundation offers at their high schools. Through partnerships with five colleges and universities in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, the foundation pays tuition for these courses, giving students who earn 60 hours the chance to graduate with an accredited associate’s degree without having to travel to and from a college campus. Clark says that those who complete fewer hours will still have a head start on college-level coursework and build their confidence and the likelihood they’ll participate in further higher education.

For Clark, taking oil and gas money to improve his community was an easy decision. “You can be a spectator to this crisis level of poverty in our area, or you can do something about it,” he told me.

Not every decision to engage with oil and gas money is as uncomplicated as Clark’s.

In 1968, a group of Hare Krishnas moved into a ragged farmhouse on a plot of hilly West Virginia land so inaccessible that no roads served it. Devotees reached it via a two-mile walk. The community that grew there, the unincorporated village of New Vrindaban, was founded so that followers of religious leader A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada could commit their lives to “simple living and high thinking” — their own version of paradise. Prabhudpada said at the time their purpose was to, “reunite with Mother Earth and offer her products to Krishna.”

Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, the group was a leader in the countercultural movement of mostly white hippies determined to drop out of traditional capitalist society; in pop culture they were most widely known in those years for proselytizing in airports and at sporting events. New Vrindaban was the first Hare Krishna commune in the United States and grew to be its largest by the mid-eighties with more than 500 adults living on its ever-expanding campus of temples, housing and other buildings.

In 2011, the West Virginia chapter of ISKCON, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, made an unexpected move to lease some portion of the mineral rights on their 1,204 acres, which has brought in at least $10 million across several complex deals with numerous energy companies. In addition to generous signing bonuses, royalty payments have followed in all the years since.

Long ago, the citizens of the commune at New Vrindaban replaced the dirt path with asphalt. On my visit last summer, I drove tentatively up and down the steep hills leading to its entrance. Trenches were being dug and long snakes of white pipe a foot in diameter stretched up and over a hill. Horses grazed around them. At the summit of a particularly tall hill, a black and gold scalloped dome came into view, the first peek of the Hare Krishnas’ Palace of Gold. Stunningly ornate, the building was erected without blueprints by self-taught devotees, who learned stained glass and other fine craftsmanship in order to build this shrine for Prabhupada. In 2012, CNN designated it one of the eight religious wonders of the United States. The group welcomes tourists to the palace and encourages pilgrims and other visitors to spend time in New Vrindaban where there is a vegetarian restaurant, overnight accommodation, a cow sanctuary, a vibrant temple, two gift shops and numerous roaming peacocks. Funds from these activities partially finance the year-round operation where 225 people — and 70 cows — reside full-time.