Chesapeake Claims April Spill Caused No Long-Term Damage

• Scott Detrow
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  Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.
  
  Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.
  
  Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

We’re a few days behind on this, but Chesapeake Energy has released information about an investigation it funded, looking into April’s major Bradford County well spill.
A private consulting firm hired by Chesapeake has found no lasting damage caused by the spill of 10,000-plug gallons of fracking fluid in Leroy Township.
The Department of Environmental Protection is still investigating the accident; it’s unclear if or when DEP will issue a penalty. The department slapped a $1 million fine on Chesapeake earlier this year, for a Washington County well pad fire, and several methane migration incidents in Bradford County.
Here’s the Times-Tribune’s look at the Chesapeake study:

A review of a natural gas well that failed in Bradford County six months ago shows no lasting damage to the environment, according to information released late Saturday by Chesapeake Energy Corp.
A mechanical failure at an Atgas 2H well owned by Chesapeake in LeRoy Twp. caused thousands of gallons of tainted wastewater to flow into Towanda Creek, a tributary of the Susquehanna River, on April 19. The state Department of Environmental Protection then issued a violation notice ordering Chesapeake to provide more information about the spill, including what chemicals and other materials were being used at the well site and what may have spilled into the environment.
Chesapeake released information late Saturday from SAIC, an Oklahoma consulting company Chesapeake hired to review the incident.

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