There are two oft-heard phrases in the village of Penobsquis.

“The streets should be paved in gold, but instead they’re sinking,” says Beth Nixon, a resident here for nearly her entire life. “And Sussex got the boom and Penobsquis got the shaft.”

The remark sparks laughter from the seven people sitting around the dining room table.

They’re pretty happy for disgruntled citizens, or “Concerned Citizens,” as their group is officially called.

They’ve gathered to hold a weekly steering committee meeting, where the direction of a broader group, about 60 citizens concerned for the well-being of their community, is set.

Crowded around a computer screen, they flip through pictures and charts, and bring up news articles. The Internet has allowed them to organize and find information with ease. They’ve even built their own website.

They share fruit and drinks and go about business, trying their best to ignore the flash of my camera in the room. They talk about how Penobsquis has evolved right before their eyes. It seems like yesterday the village was like every other rural community: a tranquil, pristine farming community with rolling green pastures; a tight-knit place, with a village hall, a volunteer fire department, a church, and an outdoor rink. Today, roads are busy with 18-wheelers, everyone drives a big pickup truck, and natural gas well pads are scattered throughout the community.

Those at the table tell different stories about how they’ve been affected by the development of their village, located about 15 kilometres north-east of Sussex, New Brunswick.

Chris Bell hosts the meetings every week, and also serves as chair of the Local Service District in the Parish of Cardwell. She lost running water into her home when the groundwater well on her property mysteriously ran  dry in 2004.

“We went to the expense and we deepened the spring, and it lasted a month, and we ended up drilling a new well,” says Bell.

That well dried up after two months.

Nearly 50 other homes nearby lost their groundwater source between that time and 2008.

Nixon, whose family also lost its well, recalls when her nine-year-old son Allan, who was three at the time,  woke one night to what she thought was an explosion in the furnace.

“The duct work shook, he woke up screaming and attacking his bedside table,” she remembers.

She’s convinced the boom came from blasting operations going on nearby.

“I called my husband and he came home and checked at the trailer where they were doing the monitoring for the blasting,” she says. ”And they told him where they were doing the blasting, which was about 400 meters from my house , but they laughed at him when he said our house has shook.”

Another woman, Beth Norrad, says there are sinkholes on her property.

The problems people here experience vary, from living without running water to being kept up at night by a noisy grouting station or the bright lights from gas flaring on natural gas well pads. Some say subsidence from the mine is causing their homes to sink, and others even complain about frequently chipped windshields because of the heavy truck traffic on the roads.

And though the events don’t appear similar at all, each person at this table believes the occurrences are directly connected to the ongoing industrial development of their rural community.

Nixon says what’s happening is simple: the quality of life of some is being sacrificed for the economic prosperity of many.

“The residents of Penobsquis are paying,” she says. “We’re not only paying with our water, we’re not only paying with reduced property values because of the (gas) flares, and light pollution, and increased traffic. Our homes are sinking, so it’s a straight-out loss.”

Little Texas

A lot is happening here for a village of about 600 people.

You know you’ve arrived in Penobsquis when you drive past the two potash mines on opposite sides of the old Trans Canada Highway, Route 114.

On the left is the existing mine, which has stood there since 1983. On the right is continuing construction on the new $1.66-billion mineshaft, which will replace the old one by 2011 or 2012. PotashCorp, the world’s largest potash producer, runs the old mine and is building the new one.

A few kilometres down the highway, in the old Rednex meatstick plant, is Corridor Resources, a Halifax-based junior oil and gas company,  which set up shop in Penobsquis in the late 90s. Corridor is operating 29 natural gas wells in Penobsquis and the surrounding area. Its deposit, the McCully gas field, lies deep in the ground beneath the village, spans horizontally for 15 kilometres, and sits five kilometres wide, according the Department of Natural Resources. The first two gas wells began operating in April of 2003 in partnership with the mine.

“That’s when a small village became a lot like a mini Texas,” says Bruce Northrup, the Progressive Conservative MLA for Kings East. “Gas pads were being established, big 18-wheelers running around 24-hours-a-day, flames coming out of gas stacks, lighting up the whole village.”

It was later that year people in the community began to experience problems with their ground water source.

In 2004, 15 houses lost their groundwater well, and by 2008, almost 50 homes were without running water.

The Water War

“For Rent: One dry well. $400/year.”

That sign is nailed to Gordon Fraser’s front porch. Fraser lives in a small, white paint-chipped house on 2.2 acres of land in Penobsquis.

Inside, he sits at the kitchen table,  chewing on canned sardines.

He may be 70-years-old, but he’s still sharp, and extremely skeptical. He’s nervous about being recorded, and asks if I’m there secretly on behalf of the mine. After I field a few questions about my background and why I’m there to see him, he opens up.

“Don’t ever get married,” he tells me.

His wife left him five years ago, and he now lives alone with his two dogs, Sandy and Sabian.

His house is like a time capsule.  There’s a noose hanging from the wall above the stove. A friend who worked at the Dorchester  penitentiary gave it to him. In an adjacent room, he’s got a turntable and about 3, 000 records, he guesses. On the table, he flips through an old Saint John newspaper from the 1970s. There’s a dusty CD player that looks like it’s never been used, and pinned to the wall is a painting of a cardinal he says the notorious New Brunswick murderer Alan Leger gave to him.

“I was at his trial in Burton, and I wrote and asked him for that, what he was drawing, and he sent it me,” Fraser laughs. “He was drawing while the trial was going on.”

Beside that hangs a framed certificate, made out to Gordon Fraser, for his twenty years of service to the government of New Brunswick.

He says nothing when asked if he finds it funny that it’s the government he’s fighting in an ongoing water dispute that has left Fraser to live without running water since September.

He has been collecting rain, melting snow and lugging water from a nearby stream to protest what he calls unfair treatment by the provincial government.

“I think I’ve paid enough taxes in my lifetime, that I shouldn’t have to sign a god damned contract to have a drink of water, and pay for something that was taken from me,” says  Fraser.

His frustration sums up how more than 60 people in Penobsquis feel about the fee being imposed on the community for use of a new public water system. They believe seismic work from the local mine cracked their aquifer and caused water wells at almost 50 homes to run dry. They say imposing a $400 annual fee to use the system is unfair.

The government supplied affected homes with tanks, and had been trucking in free water for household use three times a week. In some cases, people were receiving deliveries for up to six years. The government stopped the deliveries when the new water system was turned on in September 2009, leaving residents no choice but to sign a contract and hook in.

Northrup tried to establish a fund to pay for the user fees, but his bill was defeated at second reading in the legislature.

To make matters worse, the government backed out of a promise it made to residents that would have allowed them to form their own water commission so they could operate the system. Instead, the job was farmed out to Sussex Corner, a neighbouring municipality, because the province didn’t want to give the responsibility to an unincorporated body.

Out of necessity, every person against a fee gave in and signed a contract with Sussex Corner.

All of them, except for Fraser.

He says he’ll never pay.

“It’s like someone stealing your car and then selling it back to you,” he says.

Stephen Battah, executive director of community funding and technical services with the Department of Local Government, says for its part, the government has done a good job managing the Penobsquis water dispute. Aside from trucking the water, it paid to decommission the dried-up wells, and hooked users in to the new system free of charge. Battah says his department is aware of a senior citizen living without running water, but stressed that no one can hook into the $9.2 million system free because it costs money to operate.

“We understand that (losing water) wasn’t their fault, but it’s not our fault either,” says Battah. “We can’t allow anyone not to pay a fee, because then you’ve got 45 others who won’t want to pay.”

So whose responsibility is it, and where did the water go?

A 2005 study, commissioned by the potash mine, was inconclusive in determining whether or not water flowing into the mine at the time was from the same aquifer the residents were drawing from.

“Residents began seeing a decline in their water wells, some weren’t able to produce the water that they needed, and early on there was an investigation to see if there was a link between mining operations and water loss,” said mine manager Mark Fracchia, who has worked there since 2007. “And at best, the results were inconclusive.”

Because PotashCorp mines at depths of 400 to 700 meters, Fracchia says it isn’t likely the water they were drawing was coming from a residential aquifer, which typically sit less than 120 meters from the surface.

“It’s a complex geology in the area, and most water wells draw water from the aquifers close to the surface,” he said. “From what we found from our test, the only thing we could tell is that we were drawing water from an aquifer well below those that were producing water for nearby residents.”

The explanations don’t fly with Fraser.

As far as he’s concerned, it was industry that ran his well dry, and there’s nothing anyone can say to make him believe otherwise.

“The potash (mine) sucked the water out, Corridor over blasted and choked the veins off, so there’ll  never be water here, that’s what happened,” he says.

The Boom

It was 1978 and Beth Nixon was in grade two when construction began on the Penobsquis  potash mine.

“I thought, ‘this is great, maybe someday we’ll become a city,’” she remembers. “It was at that time time Sussex got a second mall, and it sort of seemed neat and cool.”

She grew up on a family farm on the Back Road, one of the main roads in Penobsquis.

“The only houses were farm houses,” she says.

It was a time of big change for Penobsquis. Until then, there was only a two-room school house, and a church, and everyone knew everyone, Nixon says. New houses were being built, and new families were moving in. The mine began operating in July of 1983, and it has been a staple in the community ever since.

But in 2007, water inflow problems peaked, raising concerns about the future of the mine and the 340 well-paying jobs it provides the region.

No one wanted a repeat of what happened 30 kilometres away at the Cassidy Lake mine, which closed in 1997 because of water inflow. That was a hectic time for families in Sussex and the surrounding area. Kids’ dads were packing up and heading west to find work. Entire families were uprooted and gone from the community in weeks.

So when in July 2007,  PotashCorp announced it would construct a new, $1.66-billion mine shaft across the road from the existing mine, people were relieved. New jobs were available and people were eager.

“The mine held information meetings, and they thought they’d get people there who were worried about environmental stuff,” says Charlene MacKenzie, a newspaper reporter at the Kings County Record who covered the water dispute. “The people lined up, and all they wanted to know was ‘when are you hiring?’”

The new mine is expected to have a 25 to 30 year life span, and has created more than 700 jobs for the period of construction. It should be operating in full swing by 2015. Fracchia estimates $500 million on contracts has been spent during construction at the new mine, 70 per cent of which have been awarded locally.

“We tried pretty hard from the start of the project to ensure high level of local contracts,” he says.

The existing mine paid the provincial government nearly $30 million in royalties for 2008-2009  fiscal year, according to figures from the Department of Finance, and the government expects to collect about $330 million in royalties from the new mine by the end of its lifespan.

In Sussex, PotashCorp will be the namesake of the long-awaited wellness centre, after the company gave $1 million toward the construction. The company has also been lauded for a $100, 000 donation to the Atlantic youth rehabilitation facility, Portage. It also contributed $1.2 million to the construction of the Penobsquis water system.

Because of its contributions to the region, the mine sees itself as a good corporate neighbour.

“We do a survey within the community to gauge perception and the last survey done about a year and a half ago was very favourable. I think we have a lot of support in the community,”Fracchia says.

He is aware of the group of people in Penobsquis that believe the mine is causing property damage, but he says the fears people like Nixon express —that their homes are sinking, that their property values are dropping— are misplaced and unfounded.

“We’ve met with the Concerned Citizens, and I think we’ve made a pretty good effort to educate them about how that works, and what the real impacts are, instead of the ones people fear, the one you see on the Internet, the worst case scenarios.

“Potash mining has low level, broad, general subsidence,” he said. “We have yet to see any damage caused by that.”

PotashCorp is a big player in Penobsquis, but potash isn’t the only game in town.

In 2000, Corridor Resources discovered the McCully gas field, which is now the home of 29 natural gas wells, producing a little more than 20 million cubic feet of gas per day.

The first two wells were found on a joint drilling operation between Corridor and the mine.

Corridor’s presence in the community has grown significantly since then. A community liaison committee meets every two months to discuss concerns people have with the operations. The company also sends out a newsletter to inform residents of any company news.

“It’s been a very useful framework,” says Norm Miller, president and CEO of Corridor Resources. “When there’s a new activity that we need to explain to the community, so when we’re building a pipeline or we’re doing a new seismic program, and conducting drilling in a new area, we’ll have an open house to explain.”

Corridor pumps its gas into a 50 kilometre pipeline, which hooks into the Maritimes & North eastern pipeline, and distributes the gas to markets in the US and Canada.

Miller says natural gas hasn’t penetrated the markets in Canada as deeply as it has in the US, but he believes it will catch on.

“It has less of an environmental footprint than coal or oil, less greenhouses gases,” he says.

Corridor recently learned that one of its deposits holds about 60 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that sits in shale rock east of Penobsquis, near Elgin.  Approximately 1 billion cubic feet can heat around 5, 000 homes per year. The find is so big, Corridor in December farmed out some its operations to Apache Canada, an Alberta-based oil and gas company with “a front line expertise in fracturing and producing natural gas from shales.”

Though they haven’t been able to establish how much of the gas, which is trapped in rock 2,000 to 4,000 meters below the surface, is salvageable, Miller expects that if they’re successful, there’ll be way more natural gas than New Brunswick ever needs.

Premier Shawn Graham believes the development of gas deposits in the province will lead to a big payout for New Brunswickers in the long run.

“We’ve got new potential with some gas finds that are exiting for the province,” says Graham, whose father Alan sits on the board of directors of Petroworth, an oil and gas company with exploration operations in New Brunswick. “It will produce new revenue streams that we’ll be able to take and invest in our education and health care programs, and I think this region of the province is ripe for those types of opportunities.”

The perfect storm
For all the trouble the development in Penobsquis has brought local residents, some people there are enjoying better lives because of it.

The Timberland Motel, which was dealt a huge blow when it was bypassed by the four-lane highway from Moncton to Sussex, has a new lease on life. The parking lot is full most days during the week, filled with workers from the gas rigs and the mine.

Some families are lucky to have a job at the old mine, and some have found temporary work on the new mine shaft.

The luckiest residents lease their property to Corridor to house natural gas infrastructure like a pipeline or a well pad.

With the wealth of natural resources in the ground beneath the village, what’s happening in Penobsquis—home of the province’s only potash and natural gas production operations—is like a sweepstakes or a lottery.

“Everyone is hoping to have a strike on their land so they have guaranteed source of revenue coming in,” says Graham.

Take the Wallace family, for example. They own a dairy farm on the Back Road, one kilometre north of the mine. The farm has been in the family for more than 100 years, and has been milking cows with Holstein Canada for 98 continuous years. With the exception of a few hired hands, John and his son Andrew do the all the day-to-day work. There’s no denying farming is backbreaking work, but Andrew says life in pastures is a little bit easier since his family began leasing its land to Corridor.

“Having extra money means for flexibility,” he says. “I wouldn’t say things (at work) are a whole lot better, but there are definitely less headaches with the newer equipment and a barn.”

They built a new machine shed, bought a John Deere cab tractor, a new round baler and hay wagons. Those investments have helped the farm boost its productivity.

“It makes the work a lot easier on hot days,” says Wallace, who has lived on the farm since 1984, the year he was born. “None of this would have been possible without the gas.”

Corridor has gas piping underneath their fields, and a well-pad set up across the road, on a parcel of land the Wallaces don’t use.

“The release of gases that are burned as they exit the flare stacks are very noisy at times, a constant rumble,  and also very bright,” Andrew says. “Enough to light up inside my home at night.”

But the pros of leasing their land outweigh the cons, he says. Wallace represents a divide in the community, the portion of the population that didn’t lose its water, and doesn’t have stories about cracking foundations and sinking homes.

He is aware there’s a group of people who’re disgruntled over the development, but personally, he enjoys it.

“It was exciting at first,” says Andrew, who remembers Penobsquis as a rather boring place to grow up.  “Penobsquis used to be a quiet village without a whole lot going on. Seeing heavy equipment all the time for the first few years took a little getting used to. I think they’re doing okay. Personally, I have no complaints.”

Wallace’s optimism isn’t shared by the residents who live a few kilometres away near the Penobsquis Loop Road, the area where most houses lost their water, where most of the Concerned Citizens reside. They don’t fault anyone in the community for benefiting from the industry, but they don’t see the fruits of the development.

“Penobsquis has become heavily industrialized and the way it has been done shows that the government can have certain disregard for its own citizens,” says Michel Desneiges, an environmental lawyer who represents the concerned citizens.

He believes the government deliberately went ahead with its plan for Penobsquis without consulting local residents.  He says the residents of Penobsquis have been saddled with a huge risk and are entitled to no reward.

“The issues of subsidence will most likely get worse, the issue of property values; who wants to lose the value of their property because of mining development? People invest a lot of money, their life savings, they buy or build their dream home, and 15 years later they’re left with this. It’s a tragedy to a certain degree. That message has to be relayed to the public.”

Graham says his government has a responsibility to maximize the resources within the province for the benefit of all citizens, but acknowledges the development in Penobsquis has encroached on people’s lives.

“That’s the challenge,” says Graham. “We have such a small province, and we’re heavily populated in our rural portions of the province.

“Land owners want to see this economic development on their land as well, so we have the responsibility to have that balanced approach.”

Desneiges believes balance would entail compensation for those in the community who’ve experienced property damage as a result of mining operations.

“There is a cost for operating that the mining companies aren’t paying,” he says. “No one is saying ‘no’ to mining, but ‘do your job better,’ and if there is compensation for people to be given, who lose their property values, then buy those people out.”

Regardless, the Concerned Citizens will continue to meet on Wednesday nights at Chris Bell’s house and figure out what to do next.

Nixon says they’re planning legal action, but wouldn’t say much more than that. Even though some people want them to shut up and go away, the Concerned Citizens say they’re here to stay. It’s the kind of resistance you’d expect from rural New Brunswickers.

Penobsquis is their home, and they’re determined to have their say about what becomes of it, even if no one asks them.