May 28, 2009-
BAINBRIDGEWhat Thelma Payne misses most about her English Drive home is her neighbors.
Although she and her husband Richard now live in a condo, he still returns to their former street to cut the grass. She would like to go home — but she can’t.
Their life changed suddenly 3 a.m. Dec. 15, 2007 when their house blew off of its foundation and landed again. The sleeping couple thought their bed broke — but it was a faulty gas well drilled a few weeks earlier by Ohio Valley Energy that caused the mayhem.
That was just the beginning.
The neighborhood is still suffering the consequences. Forty-one homeowners in the neighborhood say their water wells were ruined when the gas escaped into the aquifer.
They also have been told their homes in this upscale neighborhood are virtually worthless. Some have tried to refinance, but the banks say the houses have no value.
The residents have been using bottled water for the past year and a half. They have also been living in fear of their own homes exploding in the still of the night.
The homes are still experiencing gas levels high enough that they, too, would explode if their water wells were not ventilated. Home saved
Irv Mesmer’s Scotland Drive home nearly exploded in October while he was out of town. His neighbor Jim McGee went over to feed the birds and heard the gas monitor alarm. Firefighters shut down utilities and vented the house to save it.
“The state gets the revenues from the drilling permit, while we get the wrath,” Mesmer said.
McGee has scars across his nose and above his eye from a fall last winter. He tripped over the water supply hose leading into his house from a giant storage tank in his garage. With his legs tangled in the frozen hose, he fell face first in his own driveway….
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