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.”
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.
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
DEP: Cabot drilling caused methane in Lenox water wells
citizensvoice.com/news/dep-cabot-drilling-caused-methane-in-lenox-water-wells-1.1255042#axzz1iyajDcbK
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: January 9, 2012
Methane in three private water wells in Lenox Township seeped there from a flawed natural gas well drilled by Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., state environmental regulators have found.
An investigation by the Department of Environmental Protection determined that the gas migrated from at least one of three Marcellus Shale wells drilled on the Stalter well pad about half a mile west of Interstate 81 in Susquehanna County.
The gas was found seeping into three water supplies beginning in August 2011. A fourth water well for a hunting cabin is still being evaluated, DEP spokesman Daniel Spadoni said.
Video taken from inside one of Cabot’s gas wells showed that a string of steel casing meant to seal off the aquifer from gas and other contaminants was improperly constructed, according to a notice of violation sent to the company by DEP in September.
Methane was also found between the cemented strings of casing in all three gas wells on the Stalter pad, a sign state regulators view as evidence of flaws in a well’s construction.
The dissolved methane in one nearby water supply jumped from 0.3 milligrams per liter before drilling began to 49 milligrams per liter on Aug. 16 and 57 milligrams per liter on Aug. 18, according to the violation notice.
Cabot installed methane detection alarms in three homes and vented the three affected water wells to keep the methane from accumulating and creating an explosion risk. The company is also delivering replacement drinking water to two of the homes, Spadoni said. The methane in the third water well has decreased so the home does not require an alternate water supply, he said.
Cabot spokesman George Stark said Friday that the company submitted a detailed response to the DEP and is working with regulators on the issue.
“Cabot is committed to safe and responsible operations and takes matters like this very seriously,” he said. “We believe in fact-based, scientific research to guide any necessary corrective actions.”
Department regulators sent Cabot a violation notice on Sept. 19, but neither the department’s public eFACTS compliance database nor its monthly oil and gas violations report noted the inspection or violations until last week, when a Times-Shamrock reporter asked about the status of the investigation.
DEP policy requires the oil and gas program to update the eFACTS database within 10 working days of completing an inspection or mailing a notice of violations.
Spadoni said the missing information was “an oversight.”
State regulators determined in 2009 that faulty Cabot gas wells were also responsible for a prominent case of methane contamination affecting 19 homes in Dimock Township, about 10 miles west of the Lenox site. Cabot has said natural conditions, not its operations, caused the contamination in that case.
llegere@timesshamrock.com
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.
Dimock supervisors to meet tonight on water delivery offer
citizensvoice.com/news/drilling/dimock-supervisors-to-meet-tonight-on-water-delivery-offer-1.1240848#axzz1frMxDI58
By Laura Legere, Staff Writer
Published: December 5, 2011
Dimock Township supervisors will consider tonight whether to accept a tanker of fresh water offered by the mayor of Binghamton, N.Y., to township residents whose water deliveries were stopped last week by the natural gas driller blamed for tainting their wells.
Scott Ely holds a glass of brown water that came from his 300-feet deep water well at his Dimock Township property in November. (Michael J. Mullen / Times-Shamrock)
The Dimock officials postponed signing a mutual aid agreement offered Friday by Binghamton Mayor Matthew T. Ryan, who wants to deliver water to 11 families at odds with Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., the company the state deemed responsible for contaminating township wells with methane.
Cabot says it is not responsible for the contamination, and federal regulators said Friday that a preliminary review of past water tests “does not indicate that the well water presents an immediate health threat.”
The families’ lawyer asked Friday for a retraction of that statement, citing water tests that show elevated metals and the presence of chemicals for which there are no drinking water standards.
Supervisor Paul Jennings said Sunday the board would not sign the mutual aid agreement or any legal document without consulting its solicitor, who was not available to review the document on Friday.
He did not know if the board will take official action on the offer tonight.
“We’re going to at least discuss it,” he said, “and I don’t know what the outcome is going to be.”
While considered more a gesture than a permanent fix for the families’ desire for fresh water, Ryan’s offer was immediately controversial among Dimock residents. Cabot supporters gathered at the township building Friday to argue against accepting the mayor’s offer. Jennings said all three supervisors were present at the township building at the time but no meeting was held.
Cabot critics called the gathering a violation of the state’s open meetings law and were outraged when a Cabot spokesman was quoted by a Binghamton television station saying the township supervisors had “no desire to request mutual aid.”
Jennings said the spokesman was not representing the township board.
“Obviously he can’t speak for us,” he said. “Nobody can until we meet to discuss it.”
The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at the township building.
llegere@timesshamrock.com
Lawyer: Dimock water unsafe; deliveries should go on
thetimes-tribune.com/news/gas-drilling/lawyer-dimock-water-unsafe-deliveries-should-go-on-1.1227996#axzz1cqCyvXh1
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: November 5, 2011
Attorneys for Dimock Twp. families suing a natural gas driller over contamination claims are asking the state’s chief oil and gas regulator to reverse his decision allowing fresh water deliveries to the families to end.
Tate Kunkle, a lawyer representing the 11 families in a suit against Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., wrote to the head of the Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Oil and Gas Management on Thursday to rebut Cabot’s claim that the families’ well water is safe and that proposed treatment systems work.
He cited tests over the past 22 months showing elevated levels of lead, aluminum, iron, toluene, methane and manganese in some of the water supplies, as well as detection of chemicals found in synthetic sands, hydraulic fluid and antifreeze that “are not naturally occurring and that are associated with natural gas drilling.”
“The fact is that the water in the Dimock/Carter Road Area remains unsafe for drinking, even with Cabot’s proposed ‘whole house treatment system,’ ” Mr. Kunkle wrote.
The DEP determined that faulty Cabot Marcellus Shale wells allowed methane to seep into aquifers in the Susquehanna County township, a finding the company disputes. Families have been relying on deliveries of fresh bottled and bulk water for drinking, bathing and cooking for nearly three years.
On Oct. 19, the agency found that Cabot had met the obligations necessary to end delivery of the water supplies outlined in a December settlement between Cabot and DEP. The settlement was reached after the Rendell Administration abandoned plans to build a public waterline to the homes and sue Cabot for the costs.
Those obligations included funding escrow accounts for 19 affected families with twice the tax-assessed value of their properties and offering to install methane-removal systems in the homes. The obligations did not include restoring the residents’ well water to its original quality or reducing levels of dissolved methane in the aquifer.
A DEP spokeswoman referred to a recent letter to the editor published by DEP Secretary Michael Krancer in the (Chambersburg) Public Opinion for his comments on the issue.
Mr. Krancer wrote that Cabot met the requirements outlined in the December agreement “and the law, in turn, requires DEP to follow its obligations – which we have done.
“The real issue here is not safety,” he continued. “It’s about a very vocal minority of Dimock residents who continue to demand that taxpayers should foot the bill for a nearly $12 million public waterline along Route 29 to serve about a dozen homes.”
Cabot argues that the methane in Dimock water supplies occurs naturally and is not a result of its gas-drilling activities. It has produced data showing naturally occurring methane is detectable in 80 percent of Susquehanna County water supplies.
The company plans to stop the fresh water deliveries on or before Nov. 30.
Cabot spokesman George Stark said Friday that the company is reviewing Mr. Kunkle’s letter. “Cabot continues to fully cooperate with the DEP regarding our operations,” he said.
In his letter, Mr. Kunkle quoted email messages from a Dimock resident who accepted a Cabot treatment system and found it failed to treat turbidity and metals in her water.
Mr. Kunkle accused Cabot of misrepresenting or selectively reporting water-quality test results and charged DEP with colluding with and “coddling” Cabot while abandoning the regulatory requirement for drillers to restore or replace tainted water supplies.
“To be sure, PADEP has taken a stance: profits of a private corporation from Texas are more important than the constitutional right to pure water of the Commonwealth’s residents,” he wrote.
Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com