Amid Hopes and Fears, a Plastics Boom in Appalachia Is On Hold

Karen Gdula lives in the house she grew up in, a modest home on a pretty street in rural western Pennsylvania. Ivy Lane, in her view, is someplace special. “There’s a warmth and a caring,” she said. “We look out for each other.” The street never needed those bonds more than on September 10, 2018. 

Retired and newly married, Gdula was asleep when, just before 5 a.m., an explosion shook her home. The roar was so loud that some of her neighbors thought it was a plane crash. But when she and her husband saw a fireball stretching above the tops of the towering pine trees across the street, they knew exactly what had happened.

The Revolution Pipeline, running right behind Ivy Lane in Center Township, about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, had come into service only days before, carrying gas from the fracking wells that are everywhere in the region. No one was hurt, but the explosion flattened a home three doors down from Gdula’s and toppled six giant electrical transmission towers.