Krancer Strikes A Chilly Tone In EPA Dimock Letter | StateImpact Pennsylvania Skip Navigation

Krancer Strikes A Chilly Tone In EPA Dimock Letter

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

DEP Secretary Michael Krancer (l) and Energy Executive Patrick Henderson compare notes during a July Commission meeting


Ever since he took office, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer has been wary of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Again and again,he’s chided the EPA and other federal organizations for getting involved in issues he thinks should be regulated by Pennsylvania.
Now, as the EPA weighs an effective override of a major DEP decision – delivering water to residents of Dimock, Susquehanna County, after the state told Cabot Oil and Gas it could stop providing potable fluids – Krancer has fired off another derisive letter.
In a missive dated January 5, Krancer keeps a polite, civil tone, but makes it clear he thinks the EPA has no idea what it’s talking about, when it comes to methane migration in Dimock. “Based on my conversations with you it was clear the EPA is really at the very early stages of its learning curve with respect to Dimock,” he writes, calling the federal agency’s grasp of the facts, and DEP’s enforcement actions, “rudimentary.”
Krancer goes on to question the EPA’s recent preliminary discovery of fracking fluid in a Wyoming aquifer. (Read the full letter after the jump.)

The EPA is currently considering whether to deliver to residents of Dimock whose water has been contaminated by methane migration. Up until December, Cabot Oil and Gas had been providing water to the dozen families, in accordance with a legal agreement it had reached with DEP, under the Rendell Administration. In November, the department allowed Cabot to stop deliveries, after the company had fulfilled all its requirements.
Here’s Krancer’s full letter: