Seismic What?

First we saw cables strung alongside the road (Rte 33, between Ripley WV and Spencer WV). What on earth? The cables hooked to power boxes with outlets, and new cables plugged into the boxes picked up the line. The power boxes seemed to be about 100 feet apart.

Theory 1: Spencer had a serious power outage and the whole town was running on this extension cord that ran from the Ohio River to Spencer.

Theory 2: My son who returned recently from Iraq saw the power boxes and immediately thought: IEDs! (individual explosive devices, i.e. roadside bombs)

Theory 3: The aliens are coming.

Then a few days later we saw this sign. Seismic? Here? In Jackson County?

I scoured the local newspaper for an explanation. Although there is great coverage of local high school football and assorted wedding announcements, there is nothing about seismic activity in the county. Maybe no one noticed any tremors, or the miles of cable stretched through town, across major intersections and along the highway for about 40 miles?

Next we saw this--a truck on top of a hill with a big antenna sticking up. Signaling Mars? Seismic cosmic activity, perhaps? We were still clueless.

The bizarre posed willingly with the rural--a tractor and hay rake with a sign that says...


Monster trucks along the road, with big flat platforms under them seemed to be vibrating to some beat all their own.

Okay.

I haven't heard about any earthquakes around here lately. So what the???

I saw the name of the company on the side of the trucks and looked them up online. Dawson Geophysical. According to their website, they test under the surface for the likelihood of oil and gas.

Duh. Drilling has been frantic in this area for the past two years. So why are they testing now? Who is paying for this extensive test? Why should we, the taxpayers who must travel this road every day, have to deal with these crews blocking traffic for a profit-making endeavor that will undoubtedly lead to more inconvenience, destroyed land and probably people being ripped off for their mineral rights? Who authorizes/approves such things?

The Dawson website shows these imaging trucks in action at the Dallas Fort Worth Airport--did you know they're drilling for oil and gas on the airport grounds? That made me wonder--does the governor of West Virginia plan to drill for natural gas below the highway? He is, after all, all about big business and bringing business to WV.

I have to say the crews doing this work did a good job of placing warning signs, directing traffic and keeping the operation as smooth as possible. I think there was at least one accident due to the stopped traffic, if I interpreted the skidmarks, scattered gravel and oil stain in the highway in a bad curve correctly.

I would like to think these trucks are here to find out why the road is falling apart so badly--even though all of us who travel Rte 33 know that the reason for its terrible condition is the hundreds of gas drilling trucks, logging trucks that travel the road weekly, and general lack of maintenance under the current governor.

But I think the real reason for the "seismic crews" is even more extensive exploration of the natural gas and oil fields that lay beneath this part of West Virginia, and I wonder if we're in for even more disruption in the months to come as drilling activity rises to a fever pitch.

Or maybe they found nothing except a few buried junk cars, a Big Foot skeleton and the missing White House emails.