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Landowners who lease their land to gas companies aren’t always pleased with the results. NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images The Lusk fracking facility in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania. When I first met George Hagemeyer in 2013, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation was in the process of drilling six natural gas wells in his backyard. America is the only country in the world where property rights commonly extend almost limitlessly beneath the surface, and George had leased his subsurface estate in the hopes of striking it rich in the fracking lottery. As a 150-foot-tall rig pounded segments of steel pipe into the earth, I asked George if he thought that anyone else should have any say over his decision to lease his mineral estate. The gas wells, after all, could degrade local air quality and harm his neighbors’ drinking water, and they were contributing to global warming. “Nope,” George responded. “It’s my land. I’ll do as I damn well please.” ....
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