EPA serves public interest

Wangqing citizensvoice.com/news/epa-serves-public-interest-1.1261500#axzz1kIQ5EBAW
Published: January 24, 2012

The Corbett administration’s recent characterization of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as naive interlopers evaporated like so much gas last week.

Federal investigators began testing water supplies for 61 homes in Dimock Township, Susquehanna County, and delivering clean water to four homes where independent testing has found health threats in contaminated water.

In December, the state Department of Environmental Protection ignored the state constitutional guarantee of clean water for Pennsylvanians, and allowed Cabot Oil & Gas Co. to stop delivering clean water to the affected homes in Dimock, on grounds that the company had fulfilled terms of an agreement.

That agreement between the DEP and the company required Cabot to create escrow accounts for the twice the value of affected properties and to offer water filtration systems.

The issue isn’t fulfilling agreements but determining whether drilling and hydraulic fracturing adversely affect the water supply. Yet when the Environmental Protection Agency continued its investigation, Michael Krancer, secretary of the state environmental agency, claimed that the federal agency had only a “rudimentary” understanding of the situation.

In water samples from eight Dimock properties, an EPA toxicologist had found “noteworthy concentrations” of chemicals that do not occur naturally in the local water.

To ensure that its understanding of the situation is not “rudimentary,” the EPA comprehensively will test water samples from a 9-square-mile area and fill in gaps it has found in the data complied by other parties, including Krancer’s agency.

Beyond the local water quality issue, the EPA’s investigation is nationally significant. It follows another EPA inquiry in Wyoming that, for the first time, indicates a link between hydraulic fracturing – the process used to extract gas from deep shale deposits – and contaminated ground water.

Given the abundance of shale gas and its growing role in the nation’s energy portfolio, it’s crucial to gain a comprehensive understanding of the environmental consequences of its extraction. In seeking those answers, the EPA serves the public interest.