About one-third of drinking water wells are contaminated with bacteria
www.publicopiniononline.com/ci_20566632/about-one-third-drinking-water-wells-are-contaminated/
By Jim Hook
Penn State Extension ups awareness of testing
CHAMBERSBURG — Homeowners often don’t know the quality of the water they are drinking, and an estimated one third of their wells are contaminated with bacteria.
About one quarter of homes in Franklin County get their drinking water from private wells.
Typically only half of homeowners ever have their water tested, and then only once, according to Penn State Extension Educator Thomas Richard McCarty.
“The major risk for most people is contamination from bacteria,” he said. “This is hidden both from sight and taste. Health effects may be hidden too by building resistance to the presence of bacteria, which suffices as long as bacteria counts are low and the householders are in generally good health. Symptoms properly due to poor water may easily be blamed on something else.”
Penn State Extension is offering discounted water testing kits this week.
According to Penn State Extension data for well water in Franklin County:
— About 35 percent of private wells have coliform bacteria in their water. Coliform bacteria come from soil, sewage, or manure and enter groundwater from heavily fertilized areas – home lawns, farm fields or septic systems.
— One in 10 has fecal coliform levels exceeding safe drinking water standards. This branch of the coliform family includes the dreaded E. coli.
— One of every six have nitrates above the limit for drinking water. Nitrate is of concern when infants under six months drink the water or older people with stomach problems.
— One of every 13 homes supplied by a well has lead levels exceeding the maximum allowable concentration. Children absorb more of the lead in their diet than adults do. Lead in water comes primarily from solder joints in copper pipe. Exposure to high levels of lead can result in delays in physical and mental development, along with slight deficits in attention span and learning abilities. Adults exposed to lead over a number of years can develop high blood pressure or kidney problems.
“The lack of testing by well owners is not for a lack of concern over their water quality, but instead, a lack of awareness and understanding of what testing should be done,” according to a 2009 Penn State study Drinking Water Quality in Rural Pennsylvania. “The great majority of well owners that were told of health-related water quality issues in their water supply had voluntarily solved the problem within one year.”
A deeper well does not always have purer water. Limestone bedrock has more to do with bacterial contamination of wells than does the depth of the well, according to a 2001 U.S. Geological Survey study of wells in south-central Pennsylvania. Bacterial concentrations actually increased with depth to the waterbearing zone in limestone. Many of the wells in Franklin County are drilled in limestone geology.
Franklin County lacks current data on the use of private wells.
“The 1980 Census reported that 63 percent of homes were on public water,” said Phil Tarquino, chief of the county planning department. “The remaining 37 percent were on drilled wells, dug wells or cisterns. It would seem that the percent of homes on public water has increased in the last 30 years as most new development has occurred in areas where public water is located. In addition public water has been extended to areas that were previously on wells or cisterns.”
Pennsylvania has more residents using private wells than any other state, except Michigan, and each year another 20,000 are drilled, according to Penn State’s manual for well owners.
McCarty said he is at a loss to explain why interest in Penn State’s water testing program has declined of the years. A steeply discounted program in Adams County attracted few participants.
1.8 million gallons of sewage leaks into river in Tamaqua
republicanherald.com/news/1-8-million-gallons-of-sewage-leaks-into-river-in-tamaqua-1.1306715#
By KENT JACKSON (Staff Writerkjackson@standardspeaker.com)
Published: April 27, 2012
TAMAQUA – Contractors on Thursday finished patching a concrete pipe through which workers accidentally drilled, causing up to 1.8 million gallons of sewage to spill into the Little Schuylkill River in Tamaqua a day earlier.
The state Department of Environmental Protection will continue to investigate how the accident occurred about 3:15 p.m. Wednesday during construction of the bridge on state Route 309 and whether any penalties will be assessed, Colleen Connolly, the department’s spokeswoman, said.
Fish didn’t appear to have died from the spill, said Connolly, who estimated the amount of sewage that leaked into the river. She also noted that the section of the river near the bridge is tainted by acid water from mine workings.
Workers pierced the concrete pipe, which is 24 inches wide, while sinking a caisson for a temporary bridge, said Ronald Young of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
At the Tamaqua wastewater treatment plant a short distance from the bridge, workers noticed flow in the plant plummeted from 1,700,000 gallons a day to 200,000 gallons per day, said Tamaqua Borough Manager Kevin Steigerwalt.
Their observation led to the discovery of the broken pipe.
Steigerwalt heard what happened at the treatment plant at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and went to the bridge with a supervisor from the plant.
“I had a suspicion that the bridge was involved. The plant is just a short distance south of the bridge,” he said.
No workers were on bridge when they arrived, but discharge was flowing from a combined sewer overflow that should have been quiet.
The overflow provided an outlet for the sewage, which otherwise would have backed up into cellars of people’s homes, Steigerwalt said.
He and the plant supervisor contacted the project inspector from PennDOT and telephoned the emergency number for the Department of Environmental Protection.
Early Wednesday morning, officials from the state departments and the borough planned how to make repairs with workers from the contracting firm, Clearwater Construction of Mercer, Mercer County.
Workers built a coffer dam – an enclosure that kept the river water away from the sewage outfall. They rigged pumps to push the sewage to a manhole downstream, Steigerwalt said. That was complete by about 9 p.m. Wednesday, he said.
Young said tanker trucks also hauled away some of the sewage from the broken pipe. Meanwhile, other workers dug a trench to uncover the broken section of the pipe.
They affixed a new section of pipe about 1 a.m. Thursday, Steigerwalt said after checking a timeline prepared by Tamaqua’s public works director, Rob Jones, who stayed at the bridge through the night.
State officials told Clearwater Construction’s crew to remain on the job until the leak stopped. Attempts to contact the company were unsuccessful Thursday. A voice mailbox for a project supervisor was full, and a message left with a receptionist wasn’t returned.
Connolly said DEP wants to know more about how the accident occurred and why four hours passed before the department was notified.
By 10 a.m. Thursday, workers encased the new section of pipe with cement. They let the cement harden and filled in the trench to finish the repairs.
Replacing the bridge is a $3.18 million project for which the contract was awarded in July 2011.
Young said workers will erect a temporary bridge, demolish the existing bridge and build a new permanent bridge.
The work is scheduled to end in May 2013.
Relax, It’s Just a Run-of-the-Mill Nuke Spill
www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/26/relax-its-just-a-run-of-the-mill-nuke-spill/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=relax-its-just-a-run-of-the-mill-nuke-spill
by DAVE LINDORFF
April 26, 2012
The Limerick Incident Wasn’t an “EPPI”
A little over a month ago, back on March 19, at 3:00 in the morning, the Limerick Nuclear Power Station, which runs two aging GE nuclear reactors along the Schuylkill River west of Philadelphia, had an accident. As much as 15,000 gallons of reactor water contaminated with five times the official safe limit of radioactive Tritium as well as an unknown amount of other dangerous isotopes from the reactor’s fission process blew off a manhole cover and ran out of a large pipe, flowing into a streambed and on into the river from which Philadelphia and a number of smaller towns draw their municipal water supplies.
No public announcement of this spill was made at the time, so the public in those communities had no idea that it had occurred, and water system operators had no opportunity to shut down their intakes from the river. There was no report about the spill in Philadelphia’s two daily newspapers or on local news programs.
Only weeks later, after the regional office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was finally sent an official report by Exelon, the owner of the plant, did a public notice get posted on the NRC’s website, after which some excellent reporting on the incident was done by Evan Brandt, a reporter for a local paper called The Pottstown Mercury.
We contacted the NRC regional office with oversight over Limerick and were told that Exelon had only reported the incident to state authorities — the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA). A call to the DEP elicited a response that the state agency, now in the hands of a Republican governor who has shown open distain for environmental concerns ranging from nuclear waste to regulation of natural gas fracking chemicals, that it did not feel it was necessary to issue any public report on the spill. “Exelon assured us that it was not an EPPI incident,” explained DEP regional office spokeswoman Deborah Fries.
“What’s an EPPI?” she was asked. “It’s an Event of Potential Public Interest,” Fries replied.
In other words, Exelon and the state’s DEP and PEMA officials, meeting behind closed doors, agreed that the spilling of up to 15,000 gallons of radioactive isotope-laced reactor water into a river that supplies drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people was not an event of “potential public interest,” and so they didn’t make it public, thus insuring that it would not become a matter of public interest, or even of public knowledge! The logic is impeccable, though the NRC subsequently protested that Exelon should have reported the incident to the commission, which would automatically have posted it on its website as public notice of a spill.
Read more
Ex-DEP Official Says All Pa. Oil, Gas Waste Needs Treatment
www.manufacturing.net/news/2012/04/ex-dep-official-says-all-pa-oil-gas-waste-needs-treatment
Mon, 04/16/2012
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A former top environmental official says Pennsylvania’s successful efforts to keep Marcellus Shale wastewater away from drinking water supplies should be extended to all other oil and gas drillers.
“It’s the same industry. It is the same contaminants. And the goal should be the same,” said George Jugovic Jr., who was formerly the Department of Environmental Protection’s southwest regional director. He’s now president of PennFuture, an environmental group.
An AP analysis of state data found that in the second half of 2011 about 1.86 million barrels — or about 78 million gallons — of drilling wastewater from conventional oil and gas wells were still being sent to treatmentplants that discharge into rivers.
The core issue is whether a problem in waterways has been solved, or if more needs to be done.
In 2010 health experts raised alarms when they found soaring levels of ultra-salty bromides in rivers and streams that are major sources of drinking water. The general view was that wastewater from Marcellus Shalegas drilling — polluted with heavy bromides from deep underground — was contributing to the problem.
High levels of bromides can contaminate drinking water with levels that exceed national safety standards and are potentially harmful. Though not considered a pollutant by themselves, the bromides combine with the chlorine used in water treatment to produce trihalomethanes, which may cause cancer if ingested over a long period of time.
Bromide levels were so high in rivers during 2010 that they caused corrosion at some plants that were using the water.
But since the spring of 2011 most Marcellus drillers have been recycling the fluids, or sending then to deep underground wells mostly in Ohio.
The gas-rich Marcellus, which lies thousands of feet underground, has attracted a gold rush of drillers who have drilled almost 5,000 new wells in the last five years. But the state also has about 70,000 older oil and gaswells, according to DEP statistics, that target different, shallower reserves.
Researchers say the bromide levels did drop last summer, but they had also expected even more of a decline after virtually all of the Marcellus Shale drillers stopped disposing wastewater into plants that discharge into rivers.
But conventional oil and gas wells weren’t included in last year’s recycling push — a loophole that state environmental officials downplayed at the time.
Jugovic said DEP secretary Mike Krancer should now take “the next step” and get voluntary compliance from the rest of the gas industry.
“It’s hard scientifically to justify a distinction between treating conventional wastewater differently. The wastewater is being disposed in plants that are not capable of treating those contaminants,” he said.
Dave Mashek, a spokesman for the Pa. Independent Oil & Gas Association, declined to comment.
Kevin Sunday, a DEP spokesman, claimed that the volume of conventional oil and gas waste is “substantially smaller” than the Marcellus amounts.
But the AP found that 78 million gallons of oil and gas wastewater were still being taken to treatment plants in the last half of 2011 — about 33 percent less than the Marcellus quantity that was raising concerns in 2010, but still a substantial amount. If that rate continues, the conventional wells will send about 150 million gallons of the wastewater to treatment plants that discharge into rivers this year.
Sunday said the agency encourages wastewater recycling, “regardless of the industry involved,” and added that the conventional oil and gas drillers don’t produce as much wastewater as the Marcellus drillers.
Sunday also said that the agency has created a new, revised permit to encourage recycling of waste. Ten facilities have applied for the new permit, and if all are approved, that would double the number of such facilities in the state.
David Sternberg, a spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, didn’t directly answer a question about whether there was any scientific justification for treating the non-Marcellus waste differently. Sternberg said EPA, which urged Pennsylvania regulators last year to halt the dumping, is working closely with state regulators “to ensure that, where wastewater treatment facilities are accepting oil and gas wastewaters, discharges from these treatment facilities are in compliance with the Clean Water Act.”
Jugovic said that some previous assumptions about the non-Marcellus waste turned out to be false. For example, there were suggestions that it generally contained much lower levels of bromides and other contaminants.
He said some of the shallow wells had very high levels of total dissolved solids and other contaminants that can be a problem for drinking water supplies.
Jugovic also said that the fact that 97 percent of Marcellus drillers appear to be complying with the wastewater restrictions raises a fairness issue. Why, he asked, should the conventional oil and gas drillers and the remaining 3 percent of drillers get a pass?
Now, researchers are waiting for expected lower river levels in the summer, to see if the bromide problem has really gone away. The higher flows in early spring dilute any contaminants and make it harder to draw conclusions about the bromides.
Drilling law hurts health, docs say
thetimes-tribune.com/news/gas-drilling/drilling-law-hurts-health-docs-say-1.1298897#axzz1rpg4bvIU
Published: April 12, 2012
PITTSBURGH – Public health advocates and doctors on the front lines of Pennsylvania’s natural-gas-drilling boom are attacking the state’s new Marcellus Shale law, likening one of its provisions to a gag order and complaining that vital research money into health effects was stripped at the last minute.
Doctors say they don’t know what to tell patients who suspect their ailments are related to nearby gas industry activity because of a lack of research on whether the drilling of thousands of new wells – many near houses and drinking-water supplies – has made some people sick.
Yet when legislative leaders and the governor’s office negotiated the most sweeping update of the state’s oil and gas law in a quarter century, they stripped $2 million annually that included a statewide health registry to track respiratory problems, skin conditions, stomach ailments and other illnesses potentially related to gas drilling.
Just last week, the Department of Health refused to give The Associated Press copies of its responses to people who complain that drilling had affected their health. That lack of transparency – justified in the name of protecting private medical information – means the public has no way of knowing even how many complaints there are or how many are valid.
Studies are urgently needed to determine if any of the drilling has affected human health, said Dr. Poune Saberi, a University of Pennsylvania physician and public health expert.
“We don’t really have a lot of time,” said Saberi, who said she’s talked to about 30 people around Pennsylvania over the past 18 months who blame their ailments on gas drilling.
Working out of public view, legislative negotiators also inserted a requirement that doctors sign a confidentiality agreement in return for access to proprietary information on chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process.
Read more
First 11 Dimock homes sampled by EPA show no health concerns
citizensvoice.com/news/first-11-dimock-homes-sampled-by-epa-show-no-health-concerns-1.1286406#axzz1pCMrG0Lu
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: March 16, 2012
The first 11 Dimock Township water supplies tested by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not reveal levels of contamination that could present a health concern, but the samples indicated the presence of arsenic and other compounds that will require further tests at some homes, the agency said Thursday.
Agency officials hand delivered test results to residents whose wells were sampled during the week of Jan. 23 and will meet again with the families individually to review the results and answer questions.
The first test results reported Thursday represent about a sixth of the data collected by the EPA over weeks of sampling in a nine-square-mile area of Dimock where the agency is investigating the potential impact of nearby natural gas drilling on water supplies.
In a statement Thursday, the EPA said samples from six of the 11 homes showed concentrations of sodium, methane, chromium or bacteria, but all were within the safe range for drinking water. The sampling results also identified arsenic in two homes’ water supplies, both of which are being sampled again by the agency.
“Although the (arsenic) levels meet drinking water standards, we will resample to better characterize the water quality of these wells,” EPA spokesman Roy Seneca said in the statement.
Three of the 11 homes tested during the first week of sampling are receiving replacement water deliveries from the EPA. Those deliveries will continue “while we perform additional sampling to ensure that the drinking water quality at these homes remains consistent and acceptable for use over time,” Seneca said.
The agency began testing about 60 water wells in January after the EPA’s review of past tests by the state and other groups raised concerns about contamination from Marcellus Shale drilling.
Seneca said that the agency will share more test results with Dimock homeowners “as further quality assured data becomes available for the remaining homes.”
The statement released by the EPA did not include a complete list of the compounds detected in the first 11 water supplies.
In the test results given to the families, the EPA highlighted compounds found at concentrations that exceeded what the agency described as “trigger levels” based on risk-based screening levels or the standards for public drinking water supplies.
Although all of the results were reviewed by a toxicologist before they were presented to residents, compounds above a trigger level were reviewed sooner by toxicologists and processed quicker by the agency “should we need to take an immediate action to provide water,” Seneca said.
“EPA conducted those reviews and found no health concerns,” he said.
Dimock resident Scott Ely said his test results showed five compounds above their trigger levels, including arsenic, chromium, lithium, sodium and fluoride. The arsenic level in his well water, 7.6 micrograms per liter, was below the federal drinking water standard of 10 micrograms per liter but above the 3 micrograms per liter chronic drinking water screening level for children established by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Ely, who has three small children in his home, said the results reveal “nothing surprising: my water is contaminated.”
The number of compounds in his water well that triggered an expedited toxicological review “just confirms that we have issues,” he said.
The natural gas industry said that the results confirm that their operations have not affected drinking water.
George Stark, a spokesman for Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., the firm drilling extensively in the township, said the company is “pleased that data released by EPA today on sampling of water in Dimock confirmed earlier findings that Dimock drinking water meets all regulatory standards.”
He said that the company will continue to work with the EPA as well as state and local regulators to address concerns in Dimock, but he chided federal regulators for intervening in the case.
“We hope that lessons learned from EPA’s experience in Dimock will result in the agency improving cooperation with all stakeholders and to establish a firmer basis for agency decision making in the future,” he said.
llegere@timesshamrock.com
Officials: Threat of radon high in state
www.timesleader.com/news/Officials__Threat_of_radon_high_in_state_01-31-2012.html
By NAOMI CREASON The Sentinel, Carlisle
January 31, 2012
There are a number of concerns when buying or owning a home, but the state Department of Environmental Protection is hoping homeowners pay attention to a specific odorless and radioactive gas — radon.
Bob Lewis, the program manager for DEP’s Radon Division, finds that most people don’t really think of radon, even though Pennsylvania residents should worry about the levels in their home.
“Pennsylvania could be one of the worst states in the country,” Lewis said. “There’s a handful of states that show high levels of radon, and we’re up there. I think about 49 of the 67 counties in the state are EPA zoned 1 counties. It’s just a characteristic of our geography. It’s easy for gas to migrate through the ground.”
The federal Environmental Protection Agency splits the country into three zones of radon levels, with Zone 1 being the highest and Zone 3 having the lowest levels. Pennsylvania just happens to find itself in a Zone 1 hotspot, where levels of radon are most often above the acceptable limit. Not all of Pennsylvania is Zone 1.
Radon is a gas that rises from the soil. Radon levels are low enough outside that no one really has to worry about the risk being outside. However, radon can build up in enclosed spaces, such as homes, and increase the level of indoor radon to dangerous levels.
Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer, and the leading cause in non-smokers. Radon is expected to be the cause of 20,000 lung cancer deaths every year, according to the DEP.
“Radon affects the lungs,” Lewis said. “Because it’s a gas, you breathe it in. The particles lodge on the lining tissue in the tracheal/bronchial part of the lung, and those particles are radioactive. It gives off radioactive emissions in the lung, which affects the DNA.”
There isn’t a set exposure level of radon that means all residents will get lung cancer. Those who smoke are much more likely to get lung cancer when being additionally exposed to radon, while it could be hit-and-miss for non-smokers who live in homes with high levels of radon, especially depending on how long a person has lived in that home.
“The best possible thing you can do is test your house,” Lewis said. “It’s so easy to do. You can get a test kit that costs $25 or $30 from a home center and test your house. We generally test in the basement, so you get the worst-case scenario number. People don’t realize they could test for it. I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and that seems to be the biggest misconception.”
DEP calls for Marcellus air data
republicanherald.com/news/dep-calls-for-marcellus-air-data-1.1264911
BY ROBERT SWIFT (HARRISBURG BUREAU CHIEF rswift@timesshamrock.com)
Published: January 31, 2012
HARRISBURG – Operators of Marcellus wells, drilling rigs and compressor stations are being notified by state officials to provide air emissions data by March 1, highlighting an issue activists want more attention given in pending impact fee legislation.
A notice by the Department of Environmental Protection in the Pennsylvania Bulletin calls for operators to provide emission source reports covering 2011 for facilities involved in different phases of the Marcellus production process. The agency notified 99 firms about the requirement last month and the notice in the Jan. 28 bulletin is to cast a wider net.
The March 1 deadline is set because DEP has to provide a comprehensive inventory of air emissions to the federal Environmental Protection Agency by year’s end. This inventory is updated every three years. This will be the first time emissions data for Marcellus production and processing operations is included in the inventory, which covers everything from refineries and manufacturing plants, to dry cleaners and gas stations.
The inventory is important for maintaining air quality standards and determining ozone levels, said DEP officials. The agency plans to start long-term air monitoring studies at several sites and the emissions data will be part of that effort. DEP did not identify any emission levels that would constitute a public health concern when it did short-term air quality sampling in 2010 in the drilling regions of Bradford, Susquehanna, Tioga, Greene and Washington counties, said DEP Secretary Michael Krancer.
A Pittsburgh-based environmental group said Pennsylvania needs to do more to address the issue of Marcellus-related air emissions.
DEP should look at the combined impact of emissions from stages of Marcellus production rather than permitting each emission as a minor source of pollutants, said Lauren Burge, an attorney for Group Against Smog and Pollution.
“Many sources in this industry are located near each other, connected to each other and owned by the same company. However, because DEP considers them to be separate sources of pollutants, many of these facilities are able to avoid being permitted as major sources.
Midwest utility to shut coal-burning power plants
www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/26/2610545/midwest-utility-to-shut-coal-burning.html
By BOB DOWNING
Thursday, 01.26.12
Akron Beacon Journal
AKRON, Ohio — FirstEnergy Corp. on Thursday said it will retire six coal-fired power plants, including four in Ohio, because of stricter federal anti-pollution rules.
The six older and dirtier plants will be closed by Sept. 1.
“It was a tough decision,” said Charles D. Lasky, vice president of fossil fleet operations for FirstEnergy Generation Corp.
FirstEnergy will be among the first American utilities to close aging, polluting power plants after tighter federal clean-air rules were finalized last month.
FirstEnergy had been keeping a close eye on proposed federal rules on mercury, heavy metals and air toxics from coal-burning power plants for years, Lasky said.
The new rules provided FirstEnergy with “sufficient certainty” to proceed with the closings, he said.
The federal mandate that improvements be completed within three years was a factor in the decision to retire the six plants, which represent 12 percent of the utility’s generation capacity, he said.
The decision affects 529 workers who will be eligible for severance benefits, the Akron-based utility said.
It indicated that the number of affected workers might be less because some might be considered for other openings within the company and because of a new retirement benefit being offered to workers 55 and older.
About one-third of those 529 workers are eligible for retirement. The utility has about 100 openings in its fossil fuel division, officials said.
The plants to be closed are:
-Bay Shore Plant, Boilers 2-4, in Oregon, Ohio, outside Toledo. One boiler with anti-pollution equipment will remain open.
-Eastlake Plant with five boilers, Eastlake.
-Ashtabula Plant, Ashtabula.
-Lake Shore Plant, Cleveland.
-Armstrong Power Station, Adrian, Pa.
-R. Paul Smith Power Station, Williamsport, Md.
The Eastlake plant is the largest, capable of producing 1,233 megawatts; the Williamsport plant is the smallest at 116 megawatts.
The average age of the six plants is 55 years, Lasky said.
The closings were triggered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS), which were finalized Dec. 21.
Reducing emissions of mercury, heavy metals and airborne toxics from coal-burning power plants will protect people’s health, the EPA said.
Installing anti-pollution equipment on small, old power plants was not economically feasible, FirstEnergy concluded.
Lasky declined to say how much it would have cost FirstEnergy to equip the plants with bag houses, activated carbon filters and lime or sorbent injection systems to meet the new federal rules.
FirstEnergy saw no advantage to waiting to see whether legal challenges might overturn the new rules, said Ray Evans, executive director of environmental for FirstEnergy Services.
In some cases, there is not enough land around the old plants to install anti-pollution equipment, he said.
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