A Guide To Dimock’s Water Problems

Michael Loc­cisano / Getty Images

Dimock PA res­i­dents Kelly Saut­ner and her father and mother Craig Saut­ner and Julie Saut­ner, show­ing their tap water sample.

Yes­ter­day, we told you about the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Protection’s rul­ing that Cabot Oil and Gas no longer needs to sup­ply waterto res­i­dents of Dimock, Susque­hanna County

Look­ing for back­ground infor­ma­tion on Dimock and its methane migra­tion prob­lems? A good first stop is this April 2009 Prop­ub­lica arti­cle, which labeled the com­mu­nity “ground zero for drilling in the Mar­cel­lus Shale.”

Norma Fiorentino’s drink­ing water well was a time bomb. For weeks, work­ers in her small north­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia town had been plumb­ing nat­ural gas deposits from a drilling rig a few hun­dred yards away. They cracked the earth and pumped in flu­ids to force the gas out. Some­how, stray gas worked into tiny crevasses in the rock, leak­ing upward into the aquifer and slip­ping qui­etly into Fiorentino’s well. Then, accord­ing to the state’s work­ing the­ory, a motor­ized pump turned on in her well house, flicked a spark and caused a New Year’s morn­ing blast that tossed aside a con­crete slab weigh­ing sev­eral thou­sand pounds.

Fiorentino wasn’t home at the time, so it’s dif­fi­cult to know exactly what hap­pened. But after­ward, state offi­cials found methane, the largest com­po­nent of nat­ural gas, in her drink­ing water. If the fumes that built up in her well house had col­lected in her base­ment, the explo­sion could have killed her.

Ever since a water well blew up on Jan­u­ary 1, 2009, Dimock has become a national poster child for prob­lems asso­ci­ated with nat­ural gas drilling. One of the many arti­cles writ­ten about the town­ship in national pub­li­ca­tions: A June 2010 Van­ity Fair piece. Under Gov­er­nor Ren­dell, DEP took an aggres­sive stance against Cabot.

DEP’s rul­ing came after the release of new infor­ma­tion, show­ing methane migra­tion has sub­sisted in the com­mu­nity, despite a mora­to­rium on Cabot drilling. Anti-drilling activists have made it clear they’ll push back against the state’s deci­sion, call­ing it their “Alamo.”

One thing’s clear. Regard­less of who caused the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, many Dimock res­i­dents have undrink­able water, and DEP’s rul­ing will have major finan­cial impli­ca­tions for peo­ple who need to truck in potable water, as the AP reported yesterday.

Bill Ely, 60, said the water com­ing out of his well looks like milk.

“You put your hand down a cou­ple of inches and you can’t see your hand, that’s how much gas there is in it. And they’re telling me it was that way all my life,” said Ely, who has lived in the fam­ily home­stead for nearly 50 years and said his well water was crys­tal clear until Cabot’s arrival three years ago.

If Cabot stops refill­ing his 550-gallon plas­tic “water buf­falo” that sup­plies water for bathing and wash­ing clothes, Ely said it will cost him $250 per week to main­tain it and another $20,000 to $30,000 to install a per­ma­nent sys­tem to pipe water from an untainted spring on his land.

Ely and another res­i­dent, Vic­to­ria Switzer, said their attor­neys had promised to seek an injunc­tion in the event that DEP gave Cabot per­mis­sion to halt deliv­er­ies. The attor­neys did not imme­di­ately return an email and phone call seek­ing comment.