Earthquakes and frack-waste: sounds of extraction-related disaster in Appalachian Ohio

ABSTRACT

This article critically listens to the sounds of energy extraction in Appalachian Ohio in the United States. It focuses on the sounds of extraction-made disaster from the nineteenth century to the present. In the region, economic busts repeatedly follow booms, and the corresponding energy soundscapes of disaster are bound with labour, capital, and environment. Economic booms become sonic booms and explosions, both below and above the ground. I explore the sonic components of disaster, and draw from local archival materials as well as contemporary field recordings. I map patterns and rhythms of destruction, noting that they are not random or novel but are instead structural components of extraction-based industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Sonic extraction
• energy soundscapes
• Appalachian Ohio
• sound studies
• listening
• fracking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Britan Harnetty is a composer and artist. His work connects sonic archives, performance, ecology, and place. Harnetty’s recent scholarly research is an ethnographic study of the historic, economic, cultural, and environmental sounds of Appalachian Ohio, informed in part by his family’s roots in the region. He has released five critically acclaimed albums on Dust-to-Digital and Atavistic Records. The album The Star-Faced One: from the Sun Ra Archives was MOJO Magazine’s 2013 Underground Album of the Year.

Notes

1. The author transcribed this recording from the Little Cities Archives in Shawnee, Ohio.

2. Historian Tribe (1988) first coined the name ‘Little Cities of Black Diamonds’ in his dissertation and subsequent book Little Cities of Black Diamonds: Urban Development in the Hocking Coal Region, with ‘black diamonds’ referring to coal in particular.

3. In the ‘Little City’ of New Straitsville, Ohio, miners from several different local unions played a key part in the formation of the United Mine Workers of America in 1890.

4. For a related discussion on mine fires in Pennsylvania, see Conlogue (2013).

5. Unknown newspaper article from the Little Cities Archives.

6. For a related discussion, see Bijsterveld (2012).

7. Downstream from this location, reclamation efforts have reversed the process, and animal life continues to return. For example, Kingfishers have recently been seen and heard in the area, a bird that has not been seen for some time. The ecosystem and its corresponding soundscape are beginning to return because of water that is no longer acidic.