Cabot raises new questions about EPA data in Dimock
http://philldiscgolf.com/leaf.php citizensvoice.com/news/cabot-raises-new-questions-about-epa-data-in-dimock-1.1265510#axzz1lEh9vXRN
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: February 1, 2012
Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. sharply criticized federal regulators’ rationale for investigating a potential link between the company’s natural gas operations and contamination in Dimock Township water supplies on Tuesday, saying the government selectively cited or misinterpreted past water quality data to justify its probe.
The statement was Cabot’s fifth in less than two weeks seeking to raise doubts about an ongoing investigation renewed in December by the Environmental Protection Agency that involves widespread water sampling in the Susquehanna County township where Cabot has drilled dozens of Marcellus Shale natural gas wells.
The EPA is providing replacement drinking water supplies to four homes where water tests taken by Cabot, the state and others raised health concerns the agency said range from “potential” to “imminent and substantial” threats. It is also performing comprehensive water tests on as many as 66 wells in a 9-square-mile area of Dimock.
In its statement Tuesday, Cabot said the data shows there are “no health concerns with the water wells.” Instead, the agency’s decision to deliver water was based on data points the EPA selected over years of Cabot sampling, the company said, “without adequate knowledge or consideration of where or why the samples were collected, when they were taken, or the naturally occurring background levels for those substances throughout the Susquehanna County area.”
“It appears that EPA selectively chose data on substances it was concerned about in order to reach a result it had predetermined,” it said.
In its statement and through a spokesman, Cabot said the data highlighted by the EPA to justify its investigation is often old, “cherry-picked” to ignore more representative data, mistakenly attributed to the wrong sources or explained by natural conditions.
For example, the driller said the evidence EPA highlighted to show high arsenic levels in one water well was actually “a sample of the local public water supply that is provided to the town of Montrose by Pennsylvania American Water” – a contention Pennsylvania American Water refuted Tuesday with test data from the Montrose public water supply.
“We test for arsenic in all of our water systems,” Pennsylvania American Water spokeswoman Susan Turcmanovich said. “If there was any detection of arsenic at any level, it would be reported in the water quality report” sent to all of its customers and posted online. The reports for 2010 and 2011 show arsenic was not detected at any level, she said.
Cabot said a high sodium level cited by the EPA was found in a sample that was taken after the water ran through a softener, which raised the sodium by three to four times the level found straight from the water well.
It also said arsenic and manganese – two of the contaminants found at elevated levels and flagged by the EPA – are naturally occurring and “not associated with natural gas drilling.”
Both compounds are often found in the large quantities of wastewater that flow back from Marcellus Shale wells after hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, but Cabot spokesman George Stark said the company does not use either compound in its operations and there is “no natural pathway” underground for the wastewater to reach aquifers.
The EPA did not issue a direct response to Cabot’s newest statement. Instead, it released a letter from an assistant administrator and regional administrator sent Tuesday in response to an earlier letter from Cabot CEO Dan Dinges to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson raising concerns about the investigation.
“We did not take this step lightly but felt compelled to intervene when we became aware of monitoring data, developed largely by Cabot, indicating the presence of several hazardous substances in drinking water samples, including some at levels of health concern,” wrote Mathy Stanislaus, assistant administrator for the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, and Region 3 Administrator Shawn M. Garvin.
“Because the data available was incomplete and of uncertain quality, we determined that additional monitoring was prudent.”
The agency began providing replacement water only after it asked Cabot to deliver water and the company refused, they wrote.
Under criticism from both Cabot and Pennsylvania regulators for their actions, the administrators also emphasized the legal and scientific basis for their actions, which they called complementary with the state’s role. The Superfund law, which the EPA said authorizes its Dimock investigation, has allowed the agency to undertake similar water deliveries and investigations at “hundreds of sites across the country … when the presence of hazardous substances posed a potential risk to drinking water.” they wrote.
“States have important frontÂline responsibilities in permitting natural gas extraction, and we respect and support their efforts,” they wrote. “But EPA likewise has important oversight responsibilities and acts as a critical backstop when public health or the environment may be at risk.”
llegere@timesshamrock.com
EPA Responds to Cabot Oil
www.wnep.com/wnep-susq-epa-responds-to-cabot-oil-20120127,0,6032822.story
January 27, 2012
There is now a response to a response.
Two days ago Cabot Oil and Gas criticized the federal government’s deliveries of fresh water and its testing of several wells in Susquehanna County.
Now the EPA responds to Cabot.
One week ago the Environmental Protection Agency started delivering the water to a handful of homes suspected of having their wells contaminated by Cabot’s natural gas drilling in the Dimock area.
Cabot called the move a “political agenda hostile to shale gas development.”
Friday the EPA responded by saying, “It is sampling and providing water as a direct result of requests from Dimock residents. Our priority is the health of the people there, and our actions are guided entirely by science and the law.”
In Dimock, EPA testing draws mixed reaction
citizensvoice.com/news/drilling/in-dimock-epa-testing-draws-mixed-reaction-1.1263801#axzz1klDNn16y
By Laura Legere
Staff Writer
Published: January 28, 2012
DIMOCK TWP. – Two teams of scientists sampling well water from four homes a day are producing a picture of the aquifer under this Susquehanna County town that will help define the impact of natural gas drilling on drinking water.
The water captured in vials and packed in coolers by scientists and contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency since Jan. 23 is the heart of an investigation spurred by concerns that Cabot Oil and Gas Corp.’s Marcellus Shale drilling and hydraulic fracturing tainted water wells.
In a divided village where gas drilling is as earnestly embraced as it is criticized, the controversy over the EPA’s fieldwork started before the sampling did. Test results are at least five weeks away.
The study has provoked strong criticism from the industry and its local supporters who accuse the EPA of meddling in what they consider a settled matter or a spectacle conjured by lawyers.
At the same time, the study has earned the grateful support of families, many of whom are suing Cabot, who have used their water warily or not at all since methane tied to drilling first intruded in 2008.
State officials determined faulty Cabot gas wells allowed methane to seep into 18 Dimock water supplies in 2009, but Cabot water tests from last fall raised federal regulators’ concern about the potential health threats posed by other contaminants in the water.
The contaminants – some of which are naturally occurring but all of which are associated with natural gas drilling, the EPA said – include arsenic, barium, the plasticizer commonly called DEHP, glycol compounds, manganese, phenol and sodium.
“If we see an immediate threat to public health, we will not hesitate to take steps under the law to protect Americans whose health may be at risk,” EPA spokeswoman Terri White said.
Residents who support Cabot’s operations sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson this week calling for her to “rein in” the “rogue regional office” in Philadelphia that is leading the investigation based on what they said were “baseless claims” and “hyped-up allegations” of pollutants that occur naturally in the region.
The group, Enough is Enough, created a campaign called “Dimock Proud” with yard signs, a petition drive and a logo: “Where the water IS clean and the people are friendly.”
The petition to Jackson was bundled with an earlier petition signed by more than 400 Susquehanna County residents and sent to the state to ask for Cabot to be able to resume drilling in a 9-square-mile section of Dimock – where EPA is now testing – that has been off limits to the driller since 2010. The moratorium has continued because the state has not determined that the company’s wells have stopped leaking methane.
“The Philadelphia Regional Office’s action in enabling this litigation threatens our livelihoods and is destroying our community reputation,” the residents wrote to Jackson. “These actions are an assault on our property rights and basic freedoms.”
Cabot CEO Dan Dinges cited President Barack Obama’s support for domestic natural gas in his State of the Union address when he also wrote to Jackson this week. Her agency’s actions in Dimock “appear to undercut the President’s stated commitment to this important resource,” Dinges wrote.
In another statement released this week, the company said it “is concerned that this recent action may be more of an attempt to advance a political agenda hostile to shale gas development rather than a principled effort to address environmental concerns in the area.”
The industry group Energy in Depth posted historical state and federal data on its website showing some of the pollutants that triggered the EPA investigation – manganese and arsenic – occur in the geological formation that is used for groundwater in Dimock. It cited a 2006 U.S. Geological Survey study that found arsenic in 18 of 143 domestic water wells it sampled in Northeast Pennsylvania, although none of the samples taken in Susquehanna or Wyoming counties detected the compound.
The arsenic level that triggered the EPA to truck water to one home in Dimock was nearly four times the federal standard.
The EPA rebuffed Cabot’s criticism this week, saying its actions “are guided entirely by science and the law.”
“We are providing water to a handful of households because data developed by Cabot itself provides evidence that they are being exposed to hazardous substances at levels of health concern,” the agency said. “We are conducting monitoring as a prudent step to investigate these concerns and develop a sound scientific basis for assessing the need for further action.”
While Obama’s address made clear his support for domestic natural gas extraction, the agency added, “he also affirmed our commitment to ‘developing this resource without putting the health and safety of our citizens at risk.'”
Despite some residents’ skepticism of the EPA’s actions, the agency has received permission from 55 of the 66 Dimock homes it approached to conduct sampling, spokesman Roy Seneca said Friday. The EPA has not received a final response from 11 of the 66 homes. It’s initial goal was to take samples from about 61 homes.
“I’m thrilled the EPA is here,” resident Victoria Switzer said Friday as five scientists wearing blue gloves huddled on a mound of melting snow in her backyard where her well water trickled from a spigot.
If the test comes back clear, she said, “I’ll be very relieved that our water is safe to use and we can go on living in our home.”
The water sampling will also provide key data for the future, she said.
“I’m considering it baseline testing for the next wave when Cabot roars back in here.”
llegere@timesshamrock.com
EPA serves public interest
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.
EPA News Release: EPA to Begin Sampling Water at Some Residences in Dimock, Pa.
Contact: white.terri-a@epa.gov 215-814-5523
PHILADELPHIA (Jan. 19, 2012) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today that it plans to perform water sampling at approximately 60 homes in the Carter Road/Meshoppen Creek Road area of Dimock, Pa. to further assess whether any residents are being exposed to hazardous substances that cause health concerns. EPA’s decision to conduct sampling is based on EPA’s review of data provided by residents, Cabot Oil and Gas, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
“EPA is working diligently to understand the situation in Dimock and address residents’ concerns,” said EPA Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin. “We believe that the information provided to us by the residents deserves further review, and conducting our own sampling will help us fill information gaps. Our actions will be based on the science and the law and we will work to help get a more complete picture of water quality for these homes in Dimock.”
The sampling will begin in a matter of days and the agency estimates that it will take at least three weeks to sample all the homes. All sampling is contingent on access granted to the property. EPA expects validated results from quality-tested lab to be available in about five weeks after samples are taken.
In addition, EPA is taking action to ensure delivery of temporary water supplies to four homes where data reviewed by EPA indicates that residents’ well water contains levels of contaminants that pose a health concern. EPA will reevaluate this decision when it completes sampling of the wells at these four homes. Current information on other wells does not support the need for alternative water at this time. However, the information does support the need for further sampling.
Natural gas plays a key role in our nation’s clean energy future and the Obama Administration is committed to ensuring that the development of this vital resource occurs safely and responsibly. At the direction of Congress, and separate from this limited sampling, EPA has begun a national study on the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources.
For additional information regarding this site please visit the website at: http://www.epaosc.org/dimock_residential_groundwater
Dimock Township residents plan rally, press conference
www.timesleader.com/news/Dimock-Township-residents-plan-rally-press-conference.html
Jan. 11, 2012
Residents of Dimock Township, Susquehanna County, and members of two advocacy groups have scheduled a rally and press conference in Philadelphia in an effort to gain U.S. Environmental Protection Agency action on what they contend is drinking water contamination caused by natural gas drilling.
Two activists groups – Protecting Our Waters and Frack Action – issued the following press release, and included a letter sent to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, posted here.
Health and Science Professionals Letter to EPA
Dimock Residents, Public Health and Environmental Advocates Urge EPA to Send Water to Dimock:
“These families must not endure another day without access to safe drinking water!”
Who: Residents of Dimock, Protecting Our Waters, Frack Action
What: Morning rally and press conference:
1. Demonstration asking EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to “do the right thing” by delivering clean water to victims of gas industry water contamination
2. Press Conference featuring residents of Dimock, PA, including Craig and Julie Sautner; and public health and environmental advocates
When:
- Friday, January 13, 2012
- 8:30am: Rally
- 9:00am: Press Conference,
- 9:30am: Lisa Jackson speaks at Town Hall (inside)
- Where: outside Academy of Natural Sciences, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA 19103
Background: Nineteen families in Dimock, Pennsylvania have suffered from contaminated drinking water for over three years. Despite enormous pressure brought to bear on them to sign a legal agreement requiring them to fall silent regarding their drinking water contamination, caused by Cabot Oil and Gas, eleven of the families have not signed a “non-disclosure clause” and therefore have maintained their freedom of speech. In December the EPA received documents showing the intensity and toxicity of these families’ drinking water contamination. The EPA has responded by telling the families, according to Craig Sautner, that “they absolutely don’t want us using our [water] wells at all.”
Yet Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has not only reneged on a promise made by former PA DEP Secretary John Hanger to provide all the affected families with a clean and permanent supply of drinking water, but it has allowed Cabot to cease providing safe clean drinking waters for these families. The families are becoming increasingly desperate, since Cabot’s last delivery was on November 30th.
Last week, several of the Dimock families received phone calls from EPA Region 3, based in Philadelphia, assuring them that EPA would begin delivering safe clean water to them by Friday or Saturday. No delivery has happened and the EPA has, at this time, backed down from that promise.
“Water is a fundamental human right,” said Alex Allen, Associate Director of Protecting Our Waters.
Biologist, author and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber wrote a letter signed by 26 physicians and health professionals on Monday, December 9th (attached), which said, “we call on EPA to assure that the families of Dimock do not endure another day without access to safe drinking water.”
A partial list of the contaminants in the drinking water of Dimock is here: http://protectingourwaters.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/protecting-our-waters-goes-to-dimock-whats-in-their-safe-water/ and a list of contaminants specifically in the Sautners’ water is here (scroll down): http://protectingourwaters.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/urgent-comment-by-5-pm-wednesday-11112-on-new-york-state-impact-statement/
Pennsylvania Fracking Foes Fault EPA Over Tainted Water Response
www.businessweek.com/news/2012-01-10/pennsylvania-fracking-foes-fault-epa-over-tainted-water-response.html
By Jim Snyder and Mark Drajem
January 10, 2012
When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency called to say it would start delivering fresh water to their home, Ron and Jean Carter thought they gained an ally in a long fight with Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.
A retreat by the federal government within two days has left them feeling abandoned yet again in a bid to clean up water they say was turned toxic by Cabot’s use of hydraulic fracturing to hunt for gas in Pennsylvania.
“These agencies were developed to help us, and they don’t,” Jean Carter said in an interview in her home, which is about 326 feet (99 meters) from a Cabot well. Although her reserves of water are sufficient for now, she took it as a snub. “We just keep getting hurt all the way around, as if we weren’t hurt enough.”
The Carters and other families in Dimock — a community of 1,368 and a single, blinking traffic light along Highway 29 in northeast Pennsylvania — have come to symbolize the national debate over the use of fracking, in which water and chemicals are shot into the earth to free gas or oil from rock formations. Their case has taken on a new importance as the EPA says it will test well water in the area, and advised residents not to drink from their wells — reversing an earlier, initial determination that the water was safe.
Dimock residents say their water went bad more than three years ago. Since then more questions have been raised about the safety of fracking.
Read more
Dimock residents: EPA to deliver water
thetimes-tribune.com/news/dimock-residents-epa-to-deliver-water-1.1254586#axzz1imYLPHPX
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: January 7, 2012
Federal environmental regulators took steps Friday to deliver drinking water to several Dimock Twp. homes where tainted well water has been tied to nearby gas drilling, according to three families who spoke with EPA officials.
The families, each of which received a phone call from a different regional staff member of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the regulators told them the agency had contracted a water hauler to begin deliveries today.
Efforts to reach two of those EPA officials, community involvement coordinator Vance Evans and on-scene coordinator Rich Fetzer, were unsuccessful Friday. The third official, community involvement coordinator Trish Taylor, directed questions to an EPA spokeswoman who said in an email that “no decision has been made by EPA to provide alternate sources of water.”
“At this time, our goal is understanding the situation in Dimock and evaluating additional options, including further sampling,” spokeswoman Terri White said.
If the agency begins water deliveries, it will step squarely into the fractious debate over natural gas drilling in Dimock, where state officials have found that Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. allowed methane to seep from faulty Marcellus Shale wells into 18 water supplies.
Cabot halted bulk and bottled water deliveries to the families on Dec. 1 after the state said the company had met the relevant terms of a December 2010 settlement over the contamination – including offering to install methane removal systems that many residents have rejected saying they do not remove metals and other contaminants in their water.
Federal environmental regulators reopened their investigation of Dimock water wells last week. The EPA reversed course after reviewing water test results released only after the agency’s Dec. 2 announcement that outside water tests showed the water posed no “immediate health threat.”
Those tests, taken in August and September by a Cabot contractor, showed elevated levels of metals and bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, a plasticizer commonly called DEHP. They also detected other chemicals including glycols, which are used in antifreeze, surfactants and 2-methoxyethanol, a solvent, in the drinking water wells.
Cabot denies it caused contamination in Dimock, which it says occurs naturally or can be attributed to other sources. Spokesman George Stark said Friday that Cabot is cooperating with the EPA by providing it with water test data it has already shared with state environmental regulators.
“Cabot has not been informed by the EPA of any further action at this time,” he said.
State governments generally regulate oil and gas drilling, but federal officials are conducting a study of the impact of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on drinking water supplies in several U.S. states, including Susquehanna County in Pennsylvania.
The calls from EPA officials on Friday were gratefully received by Dimock families, many of whom were running out of water that had been trucked in by volunteer groups after Cabot-supplied deliveries ended.
Scott Ely said his family of five last received a water delivery on Monday and his wife had to wash her hair in the sink Friday morning to conserve the little they have left in a bulk tank outside.
“It’s good, good news,” he said.
Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com
Dimock officials reject water delivery offer
citizensvoice.com/dimock-officials-reject-water-delivery-offer-1.1241307#axzz1frMxDI58
BY LAURA LEGERE, STAFF WRITER
Published: December 6, 2011
DIMOCK TWP. – Township supervisors unanimously declined an aid offer by the mayor of Binghamton, N.Y., on Monday night that would have allowed the city to provide a tanker of fresh water to Dimock residents with tainted wells whose replacement water deliveries were stopped last week.
The decision capped a fiery monthly board meeting dominated by supporters of the natural gas drilling company that provided replacement bulk and bottled water for years after state environmental regulators found the driller at fault for methane contamination of 18 water wells.
The drilling company, Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., stopped the deliveries on Nov. 30 with the regulators’ consent.
Citing state findings that the residents’ well water is safe to drink and a preliminary federal review that determined the water does not pose an immediate health risk, community members urged the township to stay out of the disagreement between Cabot and 11 affected families that have sued the company over the contamination.
Township solicitor Sam Lewis said signing a mutual aid agreement inviting an out-of-state municipality to provide free water to private residents raised “significant liability issues” for the township and was potentially outside of the board’s authority.
“If people want to, out of the goodness of their own heart, provide water to these 11 families, that’s fine,” he said. “The question is whether the township should be involved with that joint venture and from that standpoint the legal answer is no.”
The statement drew sustained applause in the township garage crowded with 140 residents.
The hour-long meeting, attended by a state police constable and punctuated by jeers, highlighted the division in the township, an epicenter for natural gas extraction from Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale. Residents seeking water deliveries insisted that their well water contains contaminants other than methane that make it a risk to them and their children, while residents who support Cabot blamed their neighbors for tarnishing Dimock’s reputation and failing to accept the gas company’s offered help.
Some Dimock residents with methane-tainted water accepted new water wells, treatment systems or other remedies provided by Cabot, which denies it caused the contamination. The affected families that received delivered water said the treatment systems do not work, do not remove contaminants other than methane and do not meet the obligation under state law for a driller to restore or replace water supplies they damage.
Water paid for by an environmental group was delivered Monday to some of the residents using a City of Binghamton truck, an arrangement Binghamton Mayor Matthew T. Ryan said did not require a mutual aid agreement because it was a gift from an outside organization.
“Why not let people help?” he asked before suggesting that if the township declined the mutual aid agreement and residents got sick from drinking their water, the community could face a lawsuit.
Supervisor Matthew Neenan bristled at the suggestion.
“Why should we haul them water? They got themselves into this,” he said. “You keep your nose in Binghamton, I’ll give you that advice. We’ll worry about Dimock Township.”
Outside the meeting, Norma Fiorentino sat on a fold-out chair with moist eyes and shook her head. One of the residents with elevated methane in her water, she said her son-in-law is a supervisor who voted against the aid agreement that would have brought her water.
“It’s just hard to see neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, family against family, she said.
EPA: No threat to Dimock water
citizensvoice.com/news/drilling/epa-no-threat-to-dimock-water-1.1240232#axzz1fO7zQV00
By David Falchek (Staff Writer)
Published: December 3, 2011
After a preliminary review of well water tests in the heavily-drilled area of Dimock, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency told residents their water poses “no immediate health threat.”
The email sent to residents from Trish Taylor, community involvement coordinator for EPA Region 3, notes that the review is ongoing and pledged that the agency would continue to monitor the situation.
“While we are continuing our review, to date, the data does not indicate that the well water presents an immediate health threat to users,” said the e-mail. Taylor could not be reached for comment Friday.
While the EPA has no direct jurisdiction over Dimock water quality, residents invited the agency to review state and company water quality tests.
The EPA’s email came two days after Cabot’s state-ordered potable water deliveries stopped and the day after state Environmental Hearing Board Judge Bernard A. Labuskes Jr. denied residents an emergency hearing.
The EPA’s comments were embraced by drilling advocates and Cabot Oil & Gas officials, but met with skepticism from residents convinced that drilling activity fouled their well water.
Cabot officials interpreted the EPA’s email as confirmation of the company’s test results – most of which is done through state-certified laboratories. “The EPA’s findings are consistent with the results of thousands of water samples tested by Cabot over the last several years,” the company said in a statement.
But some residents of the area made famous by flaming faucets object to the EPA’s preliminary opinion. They say their water smells of natural gas or turpentine or is turbid and unusable.
Victoria Switzer, vocal skeptic of the gas industry, called the EPA statement “lunacy.” But she didn’t see it as a total setback, noting that the agency has yet to make a final determination. She notes the EPA did not do its own tests and she is hopeful the agency will continue to pay attention to the area.
An attorney for some residents asked Taylor to retract her statement. In a letter, Tate J. Kunke offered a list of substances found in Dimock water believed to have come from hydraulic fracturing fluid – substances rarely looked for in water testing.
“We do not feel it is wise for homeowners to potentially expose themselves to untested chemicals, even if a few that have been tested for appear to temporarily pass… standards,” Kunke wrote. “Chronic, low level exposure to fracking chemicals is too great a medical risk to assume. Our clients are not lab rats.”
dfalchek@timesshamrock.com