Study Finds Little Evidence of Water Contamination from Fracking

Kim Payn­ter / WHYY/Newsworks.org

Cows graze within sight of a drill rig in Lycoming County, Pa.

The Penn State Uni­ver­sity study mon­i­tored more than 200 drink­ing water wells near Mar­cel­lus Shale gas drilling sites for an 18 month period. Researchers say the sites ranged over 20 coun­ties, and did not show a sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant link between shale gas drilling and methane contamination.

What the study did show was that between 20 to 25 per­cent of the wells tested for methane showed the pres­ence of gas before any drilling occurred. The con­cen­tra­tions of the gas were low, and the research con­cluded that the methane occurred naturally.

Orig­i­nally, researchers did report find­ing higher lev­els of bro­mide in pri­vate drink­ing water wells. They con­nected it to drilling, not to the frack­ing process. But they have since attrib­uted the high lev­els of bro­mide in all but one well to lab errors. Bryan Swi­s­tock is a water spe­cial­ist at Penn State, and led the study. Swi­s­tock says no wells tested for bro­mide before drilling.

“It indi­cates that there needs to be broader research to find out where it’s com­ing from,” said Swistock.

He says bro­mide is not a health haz­ard on its own. But when com­bined with some dis­in­fec­tants, it can be harm­ful. Swi­s­tock says they also tested for up to 18 chem­i­cals, includ­ing bar­ium, chlo­ride, and sul­fate. But the tests did not reveal ele­vated lev­els of any­thing except bromide.

Swi­s­tock acknowl­edged the study included a rel­a­tively small num­ber of sites, over a short period of time.

The study was con­ducted by Penn State’s Col­lege of Agri­cul­tural Sci­ences and funded by the Cen­ter for Rural Penn­syl­va­nia and the Penn­syl­va­nia Water Resources Research Cen­ter. The state leg­is­la­ture funds the Cen­ter for Rural Penn­syl­va­nia, and the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey sup­ports the Water Resources Research Center.

Swi­s­tock says he did not want to take any fund­ing from either indus­try or envi­ron­men­tal groups.

“This is the first project to pro­vide an unbi­ased and large-scale study of water qual­ity in pri­vate water wells…both before and after the drilling of Mar­cel­lus gas wells nearby,” said Swistock.

Swi­s­tock, like many researchers look­ing into Mar­cel­lus Shale drilling, is con­cerned about accu­sa­tions of bias.

Penn State did not ran­domly select the wells. Instead, researchers asked for the par­tic­i­pa­tion of res­i­den­tial well own­ers. Swi­s­tock says despite detailed tests, many res­i­dents did not know how to inter­pret their water test results.

“We found a lot of pre-existing prob­lems,” said Swi­s­tock. “It really indi­cates a need for education.”

Penn State will seek fund­ing to con­tinue to mon­i­tor the wells.