The country of Honduras is roughly 1,800 air miles from Adams Township.

Many Hondurans have a problem with availability of drinkable water, so the good people of Adams Township and their Rotary Club recently conducted a fundraiser for Honduran water, covered in a colorful front-page feel-good story in the Butler Eagle’s 22 March edition.

There’s another, somewhat closer community that has been without potable water for more than 10 years, since a ring of gas wells was drilled around the community by now-bankrupt Rex Energy. This community is actually right here in Butler County: The Woodlands in Connoquenessing Township.

The families in The Woodlands actually live only 11 miles from the good people of Adams Township and their Rotary Club, but somehow neither those good people nor the township commissioners think their neighbors are deserving of a fundraiser, or any other kind of relief — for example, zero fracking “impact fee” dollars have been allocated to The Woodlands — ever.

The water problem emerged immediately after Rex started drilling its ring of gas wells around The Woodlands. Rex actually provided clean water to some families for a short time after it was clearly shown, by a team of researchers from Duquesne University, that Rex’s fracking was the likely cause of the poisoned aquifer.

But after supporters of Big Gas started loudly promulgating The Big Lie (“fracking doesn’t endanger water”), Rex withdrew their water support. Shortly before going bankrupt, Rex reached a “settlement” with Woodlands residents: take a small amount of money and sign a non-disclosure agreement, or don’t sign the agreement and get zero money.

Desperate for life-sustaining water for your family, what would you do?

Reid Joyce,

Middlesex Township