Pennsylvania

Energy. Environment. Economy.

Federal Agency Finds One Out of Seven Water Wells Contaminated by Bradford County Blowout

November 11, 2011 | 2:00 PM
By Susan Phillips

Last April, a Chesa­peake Energy nat­ural gas well in Leroy Town­ship, Brad­ford County blew out, send­ing nat­ural gas into the air, and flu­ids onto the ground. The fed­eral Agency for Toxic Sub­stances and Dis­ease Reg­istry, or ATSDR, is a little-known divi­sion of the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices and works closely with the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Control.

ATSDR tested seven res­i­den­tial drink­ing water wells in the area near the Brad­ford County blow-out. On Mon­day, the Agency released its find­ings, con­clud­ing that one well was found to be con­t­a­m­i­nated by gas drilling activity.

One of the seven wells, Well No. 4, showed a 10-fold increase in methane and var­i­ous salts, com­pared with sam­ples taken in July 2010, before nat­ural gas drilling began at the site. These chem­i­cals are con­sis­tent with those expected to be mobi­lized from nat­ural gas extrac­tion activ­i­ties. Adults and chil­dren drink­ing water from this well would exceed the rec­om­mended daily dietary guide­lines for sodium. Lithium was detected at a level exceed­ing the EPA screen­ing level. The lithium level could be of con­cern to peo­ple cur­rently under­go­ing lithium ther­apy or tak­ing cer­tain drugs that inter­act with lithium.

The report says more infor­ma­tion is needed to deter­mine if the blowout caused the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, or if it’s due to other gas drilling activ­ity. And the Agency rec­om­mends fur­ther longterm studies.

The abil­ity to reach defin­i­tive con­clu­sions is lim­ited by the data avail­able to ATSDR at this time. In order to reach more defin­i­tive con­clu­sions, long term assess­ments should be under­taken, which could include:

  • Study­ing poten­tial health effects from expo­sure to chem­i­cals released or mobi­lized by nat­ural gas activ­i­ties into the air, water, soil, plants and ani­mals, and poten­tial dif­fer­ences in dif­fer­ent parts of the country;
  • Test­ing of res­i­den­tial drink­ing water wells before, dur­ing and after nat­ural gas activities.
ATSDR’s con­clu­sions con­tra­dict an ear­lier report funded by Chesa­peake Energy that con­cluded no adverse impacts resulted from the blowout and that res­i­den­tial water was safe to drink. But accord­ing to Monday’s ATSDR release, Chesa­peake Energy and the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency con­tinue to pro­vide drink­ing water to three households.

Comments

  • Agb16

    This sucks

  • Guest

    Scott, please explain why the story reads “the report says more infor­ma­tion is needed to deter­mine if the blowout caused the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion” and the head­line is “One out of seven water wells con­t­a­m­i­nated by Brad­ford County blowout”

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_5EMR3FLWP7JC7FHOO6RPT5JWG4 Chas

    Heat your house with a solar pow­ered wind­mill. And why are my tax dol­lars wasted on NPR when there are over 300 chan­nels on my cable box?

    • Anony­mous

      I’d rather have my tax dol­lars fund­ing sub­si­dies for man­u­fac­tur­ers work­ing on res­i­den­tial solar and wind, but instead, high fed­eral sub­si­dies are going to the oil and gas indus­try.  The shale gas industry’s ongo­ing attempts to man­u­fac­ture demand and con­vince Amer­i­cans that indus­trial shale gas pro­duc­tion will free us from depen­dence on “for­eign oil” are tar­get­ing pol­icy mak­ers to hit them up for more $‘s from our fed­eral cof­fers, this time fund­ing the myth that they can power our vehi­cle fleet.  

      But the gas will be gone in less than 10 years, just about the time that the cas­ings really start to fail on the 1000’s of wells left behind when the drillers move on.  Good luck with reme­di­a­tion on any of these wells, since they are exempt from the fed­eral Super­fund Act, and you can’t restore water tainted this way anyhow.

  • Car­los

    Please also explain why the head­line read one out of seven and not one of seven. There is quite a difference.

  • Melissa
  • http://twitter.com/MichaelKehs Michael Kehs

    The report released by ATSDR , while largely con­sis­tent with the SAIC reports pre­vi­ously sub­mit­ted by Chesa­peake to the PA DEP, appears to be extremely lim­ited in its scope.  ATSDR’s study con­cludes that nat­ural gas activ­ity has had no impact in six of the seven water wells inves­ti­gated and they are unable to draw a def­i­nite con­clu­sion about the source of con­cern with one water well.  This find­ing is to be expected since ATSDR’s con­clu­sions and rec­om­men­da­tions are based on a sin­gle sam­pling event in April 2011.  Fur­ther, it appears that ATSDR did not take into account mul­ti­ple reports and over 730 sam­ple results sub­mit­ted to PA DEP con­cern­ing these water wells and the imme­di­ate sur­round­ing area.
     
    An in-depth report based on this broad field of data, com­pleted by SAIC and sub­mit­ted to the PA DEP on July 13, 2011, has deter­mined that the water well in ques­tion was drilled into a nat­ural salt bear­ing for­ma­tion and thus had sig­nif­i­cant water qual­ity issues pre-dating any Mar­cel­lus Shale nat­ural gas activ­ity.  This con­clu­sion is cor­rob­o­rated by the owner of the water well, detailed field inves­ti­ga­tion of the well’s struc­ture, local geol­ogy and the exten­sive data col­lec­tion on water qual­ity con­ducted by SAIC.  This infor­ma­tion, cou­pled with the remain­ing pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion sub­mit­ted by Chesa­peake to the PA DEP, show no impact to any of the seven water wells in the area. 
     
    Chesa­peake wel­comes ATSDR’s con­tin­ued review of this mat­ter and will share any and all data or exper­tise that we can to assist their inves­ti­ga­tion. Like­wise, we would rec­om­mend the exten­sive data that has been pub­licly avail­able at the PA DEP for months be con­sid­ered as ATSDR con­tin­ues their review.
     
    Kind regards,
     
    Michael Kehs at Chesa­peake
     
    PS:  If you are inter­ested, I invite you to read the full reports and inspect the exten­sive data on all seven wells tested and an in-depth report on the salty one at this link: 
     
    http://www.chk.com/News/Articles/Pages/release_2011101501.aspx

  • Cmore­data

    “ATSDR rec­om­mends stud­ies…”? RECOMMENDS STUDIES? You have to be jok­ing!!!  You mean there are no reg­u­la­tions in place that REQUIRE water qual­ity test­ing prior to drilling activ­ity?  A sim­ple sam­pling pro­gram, test­ing water qual­ity from nearby domes­tic sup­ply wells, sur­face water and soil sam­ples in the vicin­ity of the pro­posed activ­ity should be manda­tory prior to drilling.  Estab­lish a quan­ti­ta­tive base­line for future ref­er­ence and you elim­i­nate, or at least reduce the sus­pi­cions, fin­ger point­ing, claims and counter claims that I am read­ing about fracking. 

  • Purplepeter41

    this is what I am talk­ing about Penn­syl­va­nia Peo­ple would rather let some Idiot gas com­pany drill on there land for gas and pol­lute the well water,and the water ways around the area,BUT will NOT let the energy com­pa­nys put in turbine’s (or wind­mills) witch do not pol­lute any thing and are cost effect.…   Expe­celly around the ULYSSES,PA AREA!!!!!  WAKE up people.

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