Despite having complained for years that studies on the effect of hydrofracking on drinking water supplies are deficient because they don't include pre-drilling water quality data on wells and water systems, the natural gas industry has been keeping that data away from researchers.
ProPublica reports:
The absence of baseline data was one of the most serious criticisms leveled at a group of Duke researchers last week when they published the first peer-reviewed study linking drilling to methane contamination in water supplies.
That study - which found that methane concentrations in drinking water increased dramatically with proximity to gas wells - contained "no baseline information whatsoever," wrote Chris Tucker, a spokesman for the industry group Energy in Depth, in a statement debunking the study.
Now it turns out that some of that data does exist. It just wasn't available to the Duke researchers, or to the public.
Ever since high-profile water contamination cases were linked to drilling in Dimock, Pa. in late 2008, drilling companies themselves have been diligently collecting water samples from private wells before they drill, according to several industry consultants who have been working with the data. While Pennsylvania regulations now suggest pre-testing water wells within 1,000 feet of a planned gas well, companies including Chesapeake Energy, Shell and Atlas have been compiling samples from a much larger radius - up to 4,000 feet from every well. The result is one of the largest collections of pre-drilling water samples in the country.If the gas companies really wanted to understand whether hydrofracking does or does not contribute to contamination of drinking water supplies, they would turn that information over to independent scientists.
"The industry is sitting on hundreds of thousands of pre and post drilling data sets," said Robert Jackson, one of the Duke scientists who authored the study, published May 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Jackson relied on 68 samples for his study. "I asked them for the data and they wouldn't share it."
Chesapeake Energy Hit with Million Dollar Fine
A natural gas drilling company is now facing a more than one million dollar fine from the state.
Chesapeake Energy faces what officials said is the single larges fine for an oil or gas operator in Pennsylvania.
DEP said the fine stems from Chesapeake's contamination of private water wells with methane gas in Tuscarora, Terry, Monroe and Towanda townships in Bradford County and a tank fire at a drilling site in
southwestern Pennsylvania.
Chesapeake confirmed Tuesday it is agreeing to pay the fine and said it has improved construction on wells, but the company is not assuming blame for the water well contamination.
It is the largest penalty ever against a gas company in Pennyslvania, according to the DEP.
Nearly a million dollars, $900,000 is for contaminating more than a dozen private drinking wells in Bradford County.
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Some people in Bradford County are reacting to the record-setting million dollar penalty against Chesapeake Energy.
At their home near Towanda, Sue and Paul Sites looked over the latest DEP document. It's called a Consent Order and Agreement, or COA, and holds Chesapeake Energy accountable for contaminating 16 drinking water wells throughout Bradford County last year, including on properties owned by the Sites.