“The landowners want the money, and I understand that. We all want the money. But gee, we’d like to have fish in our pond.” These words from Ken Ely, a resident of Dimock, Pennsylvania, came soon after natural gas production began on his land. While at first optimistic about his economic prospects that could result from fracking for this increasingly important source of energy, Ken soon became concerned when Cabot, the oil and gas company who owned and operated the fracking wells, began storing untreated wastewater on his land.

In Under the Surface: Fracking, Fortunes, and the Fate of the Marcellus Shale, author Tom Wilber chronicles Ken’s experiences, as well as those of several other residents of Dimock, Pennsylvania as they deal with natural gas extraction on their land. Wilber, a former reporter in the area, provides his readers with a detailed account of how fracking, a process that involves sending large amounts of water, sand, and chemicals deep underground to release gas from rock formations, has affected residents of Dimock and others in the region. While his focus on and characterization of key residents is well-written and brings a needed human element to the issue, what makes the book compelling is how he weaves these stories into the bigger pictures of regulatory struggle and America’s never-ending quest for energy.

Changes first came to Dimock in 2006, when landmen visited homes and told residents exaggerated tales of the potential windfall from natural gas extraction on their land. These landmen, Wilber explains, were hired by natural gas companies, such as Cabot, to convince residents of Dimock and other natural-gas rich areas to hand over mineral rights to their own backyards. These men ultimately succeeded in Dimock. Due to their own naiveté and the landmen’s deceit, as the residents later recalled to Wilber, most signed away these rights for the minimal amount required by the state: $25 per acre and 12.5 percent of revenue from recovered gas. Wilber contrasts this with the situation of nearby landowners over the state line in New York, who got into the game later and secured better terms, with agreed payments often nearing $5,000 per acre and 20% royalties.

For Ken and his neighbors, even at those higher rates, the consequences of fracking would not have been worth it. First, Ken became concerned about the storage of wastewater on his land and voiced concerns to Cabot, which failed to address them. Soon afterwards, Ken and his neighbors began noticing that they could no longer safely drink or bathe in their water due to pollution. Some were even able to light their water on fire. As additional problems went unaddressed, Dimock’s residents joined together to file a lawsuit against Cabot. Due to the increased frequency of and controversy over fracking across the nation, the lawsuit brought a storm of media attention to their small town.

While Wilber is technically a figure of this media madness, he is able to provide a much fuller picture of the issue. Wilber often leads his readers to ask, “how could this happen?” but he also answers this question, straightforwardly explaining the economic, regulatory and scientific contexts. Uncertain science, legal loopholes, deceit by the drilling companies, and a shortage of regulators, placed alongside the promises of an economic boom and potential US energy independence, made for a regulation nightmare when it came to fracking in Pennsylvania and New York. As Wilber discusses, there were two primary challenges:  meeting the burden of proof and, for regulatory agencies, keeping up with increased fracking activity and questionable company tactics.

The first issue relates to the question of who is to blame when a family’s well water goes bad after drilling. Cabot agreed that methane migration polluted wells, but it claimed that this was due to a natural process and that drilling activities were not to blame. Although natural seeps can potentially contaminate wells, for most families, their well water had gone decades previously without problems. The families were thus left in the nearly impossible position of proving beyond a doubt that pollution had come from Cabot, while the company did not have to prove that what they were doing was safe.

Adding to this problem, regulators at the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) always seemed to be two steps behind the fracking industry and were unprepared for its magnitude. This is evident in the permitting process for new drilling. Wilber notes that, in part because they were understaffed and pressured to grant permit requests in Pennsylvania, most applications were reviewed for less than 35 minutes and the DEP granted around 99.5% of permit requests.

Normally, the national Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) would require more stringent oversight. However, what is known as the “Halliburton loophole,” a part of the Energy Act of 2005, supported by vice president and former Halliburton executive Dick Cheney, exempted the fracking industry from SDWA standards. The loophole means that Cabot and other fracking companies do not have to disclose the exact chemical contents of what they are using, and often list only the manufacturing name rather than chemical components, making regulation, accountability, and safety even more difficult.

Despite Wilber’s extensive discussion of this regulatory struggle and fracking’s local costs, he does not ignore the more widespread political and economic benefits of natural gas. He provides a nation-wide narrative as well, one in which the US has struggled economically and is looking to decrease dependence on foreign oil and for a “bridge fuel,” that allows for the creation of power with fewer CO2 emissions than coal. Natural gas has been increasingly used to generate US energy, and energy generation from natural gas has nearly doubled in the past decade, reaching close to the levels of energy generation from coal. Natural gas does have substantial benefits, and President Obama has even endorsed it as both as a “bridge fuel” to combat climate change and a step towards energy independence. Ken Ely and some of his neighbors realized these benefits too, and were initially excited about fracking’s potential. Wilber’s account then serves not as an explicit condemnation of fracking itself, but rather as a warning to consider the local costs along with the national benefits and as a cautionary tale of what happens when regulation is insufficient and industry too strong.