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According to AP, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a report Friday that said testing at 20 more water wells in Dimock, Pa. has shown no dangerous levels of contamination.
Methane was present in three of the newly tested wells, and one showed levels of barium well above the EPA’s maximum level. An EPA spokesman said a new treatment system installed in the well is removing the metal and fixing the problem.
A new law passed in Pennsylvania forces natural gas companies to disclose the chemicals and quantities used in fracking fluids to any physician who requests the information in order to diagnose a patient. A well-buried provision states that the health professionals must sign a confidentiality agreement and agree not to share the information with anyone, including the very patients they are treating.
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AP reported Thursday that EPA well water testing at 11 homes in northeast Pennsylvania “did not show levels of contamination that could present a health concern.”
The agency began testing the water in January, over a month after the state Department of Environmental Protection permitted Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. to stop delivering replacement water to almost a dozen families.
The EPA said water samples from six of the 11 homes for which it received initial test results showed sodium, methane, chromium or bacteria, but at levels that did not exceed primary or secondary drinking water standards. Arsenic was found in the well water of two homes, but at levels that did not present a health hazard, regulators said.
Many residents of Dimock were unsatisfied with these findings. Scott Ely, one of the plaintiffs suing Cabot said, “We’ve had hundreds of tests done out here, and we’ve had so many different scientists say you have bad water here, there’s not a doubt about it. And yet when the state and feds test our water, they say we can drink it. Absolutely not.”
On the other hand, Cabot issued a statement that said it is pleased by the test results and will continue to stay committed to environmental stewardship.
According to researchers at Penn State’s College of Agriculture and Sciences, evidence has suggested there may be a link between natural gas development and a drop in dairy production in the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale region.
Reports have indicated that natural gas development in the region has caused farmers in the area to leave agriculture altogether once they receive money from gas industries. At the moment this is mere speculation, because there is little existing data that measures natural gas development’s real impact on agriculture, Farm and Dairy reports.
Timothy Kelsey, professor of agricultural economics, examined county-level changes in dairy cattle numbers and milk production between 2007 and 2010. Kelsey found that changes in dairy cattle seem to be associated with drilling activity.
“Counties with 150 or more Marcellus Shale wells on average experienced a nearly 19 percent decrease in dairy cows, compared to only a 1.2 percent average decrease in counties with no Marcellus wells,” he said.
Kelsey thinks it is important to be aware of how fracking affects farming because agriculture plays such a large economic, environmental and social role in the Marcellus region.
Kelsey is adamant that additional research must be completed to find conclusive answers. He believes the research should investigate whether farmers who receive lease and royalty payments use gas-related income to improve their farms, or simply abandon them.
An article published in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that Washington County’s recent economic growth can be attributed to the expansion of the natural gas industry. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington County had the third-highest employment growth in the past year.
Interestingly enough, one of the most pressing monetary needs of the county is improving its’ water system.
Fracking Curation project 