Pennsylvania has had a
natural gas boom over the past 6 years. During that time
no one has been able to
get any information on what that
boom is doing to Pennsylvania.
As
Associated Press points out:
The Associated Press and other news outlets have filed lawsuits and numerous open-records requests over the last several years seeking records of the DEP's investigations into gas-drilling complaints.
Finally, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has released information on these cases. The DEP does not have a particularly good record of
transparency.
Even when pollution discharges from shale gas well pads and impoundments contaminate private water supplies, those violations often go unrecorded or publicly reported by state environmental regulators, according to documents filed in the Pennsylvania Superior Court case challenging the constitutionality of the state's oil and gas law, Act 13.
According to a 40-page brief, filed with the court in Harrisburg, it is the "practice" of state Department of Environmental Protection regulators not to issue a violation notice, fines or formal determinations of contamination where shale gas development companies reach private settlements with water well owners.
[emphasis mine]
Well, as the headline says, they finally released some information.
The 243 cases, from 2008 to 2014, include some where a single drilling operation impacted multiple water wells. The problems listed in the documents include methane gas contamination, spills of wastewater and other pollutants, and wells that went dry or were otherwise undrinkable. Some of the problems were temporary, but the names of landowners were redacted, so it wasn't clear if the problems were resolved to their satisfaction. Other complaints are still being investigated.
Since there hasn't been much information to go on these past 6 years, oil and gas companies have been saying things like:
Some energy companies have dismissed or downplayed the issue of water well contamination, suggesting that it rarely or never happens.
Now that these files have been released?
The Marcellus Shale Coalition, the main industry group, suggested that geology and Pennsylvania's lack of standards for water well construction were partly to blame.
So, it rarely happens and when we find out that it happens quite a bit more than
rarely it's either the planet earth's fault or people's wells themselves.
It's a step in the right direction for sure but it is also terribly distressing how long it has taken, and how hard people have had to work to get this information released.