Tuesday, November 12, 2013

What does Frakking have to do with the price of Pennsylvania Bluestone

Pennsylvania bluestone has been going up in price, rapidly, for the past couple years now. Also quality has been diminishing.....well, you can find good stuff, but you need to look around. Some quarries are selling only garbage lately, it would seem. Broken up, fragile nonsense—for twice what I used to pay!

Bummer dude, bummer.

See what's going on is apparently frakking. Quarries are selling land rights to oil companies, letting them drill right through the good stone, into the oil cache` down there, pumping out all that pennsylvania crude, black gold, pennsylvania pee...probably making a mess of it, getting oil all over the stone, ruining, dragging up prices, contaminating ground water....

These are unconfirmed rumors though. It's the 'word on the street'. I go to the hardscaping and masonry supply yards and that's what the guys working there tell me. I google “Pennsylvania bluestone + frakking” and I get nothing.

So yeah, this post poses 2 questions:

1. Can anyone confirm or refute this theory, that frakking is the cause of rising bluestone prices. Maybe it's just supply and demand? Heck, maybe it's even partly my fault—I've been working non-stop to promote natural stone over faux stone and concrete pavers....

2. Anyone have a good source for bluestone for me? An old quarry for sale? Ever hear of Opus 40? That guy bought an old quarry and then spent 40 years building a large dry stone land art monument out of it....yeah, I'll admit that I've had similar thoughts, once or twice....well, almost every single day.

Opus 40:

                    Above image from the wikipedia page on opus 40.                                  


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