Pennsylvania Residents Sue Over Water Contamination

Jury selection began this month for a court case over fracking water contamination in Pennsylvania.

The suit over contamination in Dimock, PA, centers around “the explosion of a shed on New Year’s Day in 2009,” NPR reported. That event “provided the first evidence of water mixed with dangerously high levels of methane. State regulators concluded that Cabot Oil and Gas had built faulty wells,” the report said.

“The company has racked up more than 130 drilling violations at its Dimock wells, but insists the methane migration in Dimock’s residential water wells is naturally occurring, pointing to tests taken after drilling had been halted in the area. Cabot remains barred from drilling in a nine mile area of Dimock,” the report said.

State testing has showed that “the concentration of methane in the enclosed space for two of the wells met the lower explosive limit, or LEL, repeatedly this year. The lower explosive limit is the point when the mixture of methane in air becomes an explosion hazard,” The Scranton Times-Tribune reported.

At one time, the case was much larger than it is today, but some of the plaintiffs are hanging on, making property and nuisance claims.

“Only four plaintiffs remain of the original 44 who filed suit back in 2009. The others have settled with the company, Cabot Oil and Gas,” the report said.

The danger that oil and gas operations pose to the water supply is a controversial and ongoing question in the water industry.

Fracking supporters celebrated the U.S. EPA’s announcement in June that it “did not find evidence that these mechanisms have led to widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water resources in the United States.”

But a government critique—from the agency’s own experts—questioned that assessment. “The Hydraulic Fracturing Research Advisory Panel, a unit of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB), published its evaluation of the EPA’s report on Jan. 7,” NPR reported.

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