Tweet
After weeks of apprehension, the Environmental Protection Agency will step in to supply drinking water to residents of Dimock, PA, a de facto acknowledgment that fracking led to contamination of the water supply in this town along the Delaware River Basin.
On Friday, the agency announced it would bring tanks of drinking water to four homes, including that of Julie Sautner, whom ProPublica first interviewed about her water problems in 2009.
“Data reviewed by EPA indicates that residents’ well water contains levels of contaminants that pose a health concern,” the agency said in a statement. Tests showed dangerous levels of arsenic, a carcinogen, as well as glycols and barium in at least four wells, and the EPA is apparently concerned that the contamination may be more widespread.
According to the statement, the EPA plans to test the water supplies in 60 additional homes for hazardous substances.
Cabot Oil & Gas, which had drilled the wells in Dimock, had been providing drinking water to the residents for some time. But they abruptly cut off service in December, and residents had no stable source of water for weeks. It appeared that the EPA would step in earlier in the month, but they changed their mind for a time while they sought further study and testing. Apparently those tests have satisfied the EPA that Dimock’s water supply is indeed damaged enough to require this intervention.
Through this action, the EPA basically admits that fracking, the process of boring into rock with mass quantities of fluid to release trapped natural gas, does endanger water supplies. They had already proved this through scientific study in Wyoming. It’s hard, then, to just continue a hands-off approach to fracking, allowing state environmental agencies to handle the regulation. Indeed, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection allowed Cabot to stop supplying Dimock residents with water. Environmental groups jumped on the announcement:
Environmental groups are applauding the EPA’s move. “This finding confirms what Dimock residents have said for months, that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection should have never allowed Cabot to end deliveries of clean water,” said Environmental Working Group senior counsel Dusty Horwitt.
But they also say the time has come for the EPA to address water contamination concerns in other communities across the country where residents say drilling has harmed their water.
Once the EPA goes down this road, it’s going to be hard for them to stop. And that’s good news for the residents impacted by fracking. Everyone with video of their water being lit on fire, send them to Washington.
13 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
“Everyone with video of their water being lit on fire, send them to Washington.” Yes, and post them on-line, too, for the whole world to see.
Hmph! So the irresponsible oil company’s “slash and burn” approach has rendered citizens’ homes uninhabitable, (through no fault of the citizens), and has since abandoned them. But rather than imposing any sanctions on the company, the EPA is forced to provide water to residents at taxpayer expense. So wingers, this is a perfect example of what you get when you under regulate corporations and chase the fantasy of energy independence in a global economy, two of the paramount issues for the teabag crowd. An irresponsible company comes in, destroys the local environment and moves on with no liabilities whatsoever. But I’m sure the right wing zealots have no problem at all with cutting these people off and insisting they “pull themselves up by their bootstraps”. Until it’s their Aunt or Sister or Nephew, ect doing the suffering.
To be conservative one must be a little bit of a sociopath.
Crumbs.
(Or the wet analog thereof.)
There is no slippery slope here, just a coverup to prevent more media attention.
Little bit?
Weeeeeeellllll,…. a little bit of sociopath goes a looooooooooooooooong way.
I think about sociopathy as a binary.
We don’t need this gas; it is only going to be exported to foreign countries. China’s energy companies and India’s Reliance energy have bought shares in the Marcellus shale. This is corporate predation on America’s natural resources. The price of the glutted natural gas market has tanked. The estimates of gas reserves in the shale have been reduced. Through reduced use of very expensive, fossil fuels there is a glut of these fuels. The market price is fixed on Wall Street. The deception goes from the very top of government through to the folks who drill and those who supposedly ‘regulate’ gas drilling.
Breaking news: Obama to tout natural gas in SOTU.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/24/us-obama-energy-address-idUSTRE80N01Y20120124
Dear Mr. President. Norway built their own national solar panel manufacturing company and have their own nationalized hydropower company to provide their energy needs. They have one plant in the United States too for making part of the solar panels. You wimped out on Solyndra when you should have made them into a nationalized industry, as Norway has their own. We need dirty natural gas like we need radiation from nuclear plants deteriorating while we wait. We need dirty drilling like we need dirty coal too. But I guess I am talking to the hand.
Oh bullshit.
Here’s a copy of the EPA memo to residents saying “the data does not indicate that the well water presents an immediate health threat to
users.”
http://eidmarcellus.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/EPA-message.pdf
Well, of course the EPA is providing the water because they are nice people. What the EPA should do, though, is show some tough love and force the people to provide their own water. Having water provided for Dimock simply sets them up to be on food stamps next. The alternative is that the householders can sell and move to where there is better water. The fracking obviously presents no problem to any part of the environment and the people of Dimock should use the money that the fracking company provided them so generously and provide their own water. The water contamination must be from some other source, not the fracking.
The cool thing about science is that it can reevaluated when new/better data presents itself.
The residents should look into bottling their tap water and selling it if it so good. Watch what happens when they suggest such a thought…It will be like the law firm conference room scene in Erin Brocovich when Erin explains the water glasses on the table are filled with water fresh from the residents homes where everyone is dying of cancer.