Uprooted

Aqua America-PVR bought Riverdale Mobile Park for a water-withdrawal pipeline to transport water from the Susquehanna River to Marcellus Shale Formation to enable Hydraulic fracturing, "fracking" for natural gas. This profitable industry displaces whole communities caught in the middle and deemed expendable. In June 2012, approximately, 35 low-income families from a Jersey Shore, PA, trailer park were displaced and destroyed because of the natural gas industry. This project focuses on three families as a visual investigation of how the natural gas industry impacted their neighborhood. Photographs, video and interviews document the lives of three families as they deal with the emotional and financial consequences of an eviction, are dispersed, and as they attempt to rebuild what they lost. Surprisingly, after generations, the goals of petroleum business and the lives of workers, investors and their families are inseparable. Local economic growth and social stability are mutually dependent but at odds.

Author

• Vander Weit, Crystal

Language

• en

Keyword

• displacement
• pennsylvania
• natural gas
• human rights
• low-income
• fracking

Date created

• 2013

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• New Media Photojournalism

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Sterner, Susan
• Bulisova, Gabriela

Committee Member(s)

• Beasley, Toren
• Elfers, Steve

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/ff365535g