The events received attention in national news media, but provoked little local worry.

“There was no reaction, really,” said Charlie Waldon, the mayor of the tiny town of Stonewall. As vice president of the parish water board, Mr. Waldon worries that the gas industry will deplete the parish’s precious groundwater supply, and he is frustrated that his constituents don’t share his concern.

“It’s going to take something major to wake them up,” he says.

Many of his constituents, though, say their eyes are wide open. They point to local sales tax revenue, which has gone up so much since the shale gas boom began that the North De Soto Upper Elementary School has been able to buy 96 new computers as well as other equipment  even as the state cut education funds amid the economic downturn. Salaries for first-year teachers in the parish have risen to $49,000 from $35,000.

As for possible environment effects, “we’re all concerned,” said Brandon Burback, principal of the school, where a giant copy of an $18,000 check from Encana is displayed prominently in the lobby. He acknowledged the risk that a nearby well could blow out, causing a leak of natural gas.

But Mr. Burback said parents and faculty members felt better after Encana contracted a company to work out an evacuation plan in case of an emergency. “We tend to fear what we don’t know much about,” he said, “but they have made an effort to educate and reduce the amount of fear.”

MARLENE DEAN, 58, has lived her entire life on the same rural property on Route 92 in South Gibson, Pa., in the heart of Susquehanna County. For nearly all of that time, she and her family drew their drinking water from a well.

In 2008, that changed.

In the spring of that year, the Southwestern Energy Company, an oil and gas business based in Houston, began work on a shale gas well on a neighbor’s property across the road.

Gas cash was flowing freely by then, as landowners signed contracts to lease their land. Some agreed to allow drilling directly on their property, with some deals reaching $5,000 an acre. Other landowners, including Mrs. Dean, cashed in by leasing their mineral rights, permitting gas companies to drill and frack horizontally under their properties.