Pike County Conservation District looking for Volunteers to allow FREE WELL WATER TESTING

Posted by on January 2, 2015 · Leave a Comment 

Conservation District looking for Volunteers to allow FREE WELL WATER TESTING

Pike County Conservation District along with the US Geological Survey (USGS) will be completing a study of drinking water wells from around the county during the summer of 2015. The wells included in the study will be selected from a list of private residential or business wells owned by individuals who agree to volunteer access to their well for the study.  From this list of volunteers, wells will be selected based on several criteria such as geology, accessibility and construction information.  In order to place your well on the list, just call or email the Pike County Conservation District at 570-226-8220 or PikeCD@pikepa.org and give some basic contact info and well location.

Help Pike County develop a baseline for drinking water quality! This is a great opportunity to have an excellent comprehensive sampling of your well water. The cost of this sampling would be several hundred dollars but well water tests completed as part of this study will all be done at no cost to the well owner because this study is funded by the Commonwealth Finance Authority through a Marcellus Legacy Fund Grant awarded to the Pike County Conservation District.   Well water samples will be compared to EPA health standards along with many secondary standards for safe drinking water. Also included in the testing will be several chemicals associated with Unconventional Gas Well Drilling (fracking).  Well owners will be provided with the results. There are only 60 openings for wells throughout Pike County available for the study. Well locations and names will be kept confidential; only the data from the water tests will be used in the study.

Everything we do began with an idea.

We have offered “Free” Assistance to this effort, but if you are a private well owner that needs assistance we are happy to help.

We realize your time is precious and the world is hectic. CCGG’s volunteers do only what they’re comfortable with. It can be a little or a lot.  Get YOUR WATER Tested – Discounted Screening Tests !

For more information, please go to CCGG’s About Page or contact us.  Follow us on Twitter 

Keystone Clean Water Team is a 501(c)(3) IRS approved nonprofit, volunteer organization and your donation is tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.    Unsolicited donations are appreciated (Helps us complete our mission), but we also do local educational workshops and local cellphone/small electronic recycling programs. If you would like to set up a program to help recycle cellphones at an event, business, or other organization.  Through our program we can recycle  cell phones, iPods, game systems, and small digital cameras.  If your interested, please contact us.

Help the Organization and Get Your Water Tested or Order the Private Well Owner Guide (proceeds benefit This Organization). Water Science Basics!

Filed under Children's Health, Clean Water Act, Environmental Health, Groundwater, Lake Pond Testing, marcellus shale, Methane Gas Migration, septic system, Sourcewater Protection, Unconventional Gas, Water, Water Testing, Well, Well water testing · Tagged with , , , , , ,

Act 13 Grant Application Baseline Tesitng Luzerne, Lackawanna, and Columbia County Pennsylvania

Posted by on August 19, 2013 · Leave a Comment 

Notice of Grant Application
The Pocono Northeast Resource Conservation & Development Council has submitted a grant application to the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development that could allow our organization and its partners to use financial resources from the Marcellus Legacy Fund to implement a Baseline Water Quality Testing Program in the Council’s service area. Through this grant, we hope to complete testing in Columbia, Lackawanna, and Luzerne Counties.  As it is a requirement for this grant, we are notifying you that if we are successful in obtaining the funds, we could be working within your jurisdiction.
The Marcellus Shale underlies eight of the ten counties in the Council’s service area. Most of the residents we serve are either directly or indirectly impacted by unconventional shale gas development. In addition, approximately 60% of the residents rely on private wells for their drinking water needs, putting them at increased risk. Monitoring and documenting baseline conditions is critical to not only protecting rural water sources and the environment, but also to safeguard the larger community water supply water sources.
The main elements of the project will include:
1.      Educate private well owners on baseline water quality issues;
2.      Provide free baseline water testing, conducted by a certified testing laboratory and collected by trained samplers, for approximately 200 private well owners, giving priority to those over the age of 65 or families that have a median income of less than 2 times the poverty level in our project area;
3.      Offer free assistance to review baseline testing conducted by this project or conducted by the individual private well owner or given to the private well owner within our service area;
4.      Implement a training program for samplers conducting baseline analysis to ensure the use of proper chain-of-custody, field collection, testing, and documentation, and reporting of the data;
5.      Provide assistance to all private well owners that participated in this project by providing a “non-
technical” review of the testing results explained in plain language, a free copy of  Pennsylvania Groundwater Quality: Your Private Well: What Do the Results Mean?, and conducting regional education outreach events; and
6.      The data, excluding confidential contact information, will be maintained by the certified laboratory and the Council in a spreadsheet format that can be then added to the Citizen Groundwater and Surface Water Database or other state and regional databases.
The Pocono Northeast R C & D Council appreciates your interest and support for this project. It will provide valuable data on the status of rural wells, as well as ensure that the participants in the study will be better off with its completion. Please contact us with any questions you may have at 570-234-3577.
http://www.pnercd.org

Volunteer
We seek new people at all skill levels for a variety of programs. One thing that everyone can do is attend meetings to share ideas on improving CCGG, enabling us to better understand and address the concerns of well owners.

Everything we do began with an idea.

We realize your time is precious and the world is hectic. CCGG’s volunteers do only what they’re comfortable with. It can be a little or a lot.

For more information, please go to CCGG’s About Page or contact us.

Carbon County Groundwater Guardians is a 501(c)(3) IRS approved nonprofit, volunteer organization and your donation is tax deductible to the extent allowed by law..  Unsolicited donations are appreciated.

Help the Organization and Get Your Water Tested or Order the Private Well Owner Guide (proceeds benefit This Organization).

Filed under "Beneficial Use", Children's Health, Environmental Fear, Environmental Health, marcellus shale, Methane Gas Migration, Sourcewater Protection, Unconventional Gas, Water, Water Testing, Well, Well water testing · Tagged with , , , , , , , ,