"Our community is done. There's nothing that can be done for us," a resident of western Pennsylvania says. "But if we can help some other community be aware before they get the little piece of paper saying, 'Hey, this is how we're ruining your life,' that's why we do what we're trying to do."
Sitting atop a vast deposit of natural gas, Pennsylvania is often referred to as 'ground zero' of the shale gas drilling boom in the United States. The state is symbolic of the impacts on communities when fracking is allowed to proceed unabated and without adequate protections for the environment and human health.