LA Times Prints Un-released EPA Report on Dimock's water contamination from fracking
For many years there has been controversy about the effects of fracking on the water supply in Dimock, PA in northeastern PA. The on-going fights are featured in the movie Gasland 2. The Rendell Administration ordered the fracking company to spend millions to extend public water service to the residents. Then the Corbett Administration cancelled that order and said everything was just fine and dandy. The EPA has been extremely cagey and contradictory about the whole matter.
Now, the LA Times has obtained an unreleased EPA report that pinned the contamination squarely on the fracker.
http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=497994
Excerpt:
"Methane is released during the drilling and perhaps during the fracking process and other gas well work," according to the undated power-point presentation prepared by the EPA coordinator in Dimock, who isn't identified, for other agency officials. The report, obtained by Bloomberg from fracking critics, is based on a chemical analysis of methane in wells....
"You would really expect the federal government to follow up on this," Kate Sindig, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's fracking defense project, said in an interview about this report. In Dimock and two other cases, the EPA abandoned its investigation without a satisfactory explanation to the people in the communities, she said.
While the internal report, disclosed by the Los Angeles Times on July 27, doesn't necessarily contradict the EPA's 2012 finding of elevated levels of methane and conclusion the water was safe to drink, it does show that at least one official determined that Cabot's work damaged the water wells. The report doesn't present evidence that the chemicals shot underground leaked into shallower wells, a possibility scientists and industry representatives say is much less likely."