First, the earth
around the rural town of Dimock, Pa., was cracked open as gas drillers used
fracking to tap the vast
energy supplies of the Marcellus Shale.
Then, in April 2009, residents there lost their
access to fresh drinking water.
Wells turned fetid. Some blew up. Tap water caught fire.
Now, nearly
three years later — and after a string of lawsuits and state
investigations has ushered Dimock to the forefront of the environmental debate
over drilling but failed to resolve the water problem — the Environmental
Protection Agency is stepping in to supply drinking water itself.
On Friday, the
agency announced it would bring tanks of drinking water to four homes,
including that of Julie Sautner, whom ProPublica first interviewed about her water problems in 2009.
“Data
reviewed by EPA indicates that residents’ well water contains levels of
contaminants that pose a health concern,” the agency said in a statement. Tests
showed dangerous levels of arsenic, a
carcinogen, as well as glycols and barium in at least four wells, and the EPA
is apparently concerned that the contamination may be
more widespread.
According to the statement, the
EPA plans to test the water supplies in 60 additional homes for hazardous
substances.
In 2009,
Pennsylvania officials charged Cabot Oil & Gas, the company that drilled the wells in
Dimock, with several violations it said had contributed to methane gas leaking
out of the gas wells and into drinking water. For a time, Cabot supplied
drinking water to a number of homes in the area but then stopped.
The EPA has
waded into the Dimock issues slowly over the past few months, provoking a
defensive stance from the state’s lead environmental regulator, who earlier
this month called the EPA’s understanding of the Dimock situation “rudimentary.”
But the state
has not undertaken the scope of water analysis the EPA now plans to do, and
until the EPA stepped in Friday, Dimock residents had found little resolution.
Environmental
groups are applauding the EPA’s move. “This finding confirms what Dimock
residents have said for months, that the Pennsylvania Department of
Environmental Protection should have never allowed Cabot to end deliveries of
clean water,” said Environmental Working Group senior counsel Dusty
Horwitt.
But they also say the time has come for the EPA to address water
contamination concerns in other communities across the country where residents
say drilling has harmed their water.
In December, the EPA concluded that fracking was likely
to blame for a similar rash of groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyo. The
agency is conducting a multiyear national study of fracking’s effects on water
supplies.
We have previously reported about water
and drilling concerns in parts of western Wyoming, as well as central
and southern Colorado, Texas, Ohio and elsewhere.
