EPA Finds Arsenic And Barium In Dimock Households’ Water

January 19, 2012 | 5:21 PM

By Scott Detrow

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The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency has found arsenic, bar­ium and other “haz­ardous sub­stances” in the pri­vate water wells of four homes in Dimock, Susque­hanna County.

The chem­i­cals — while not defin­i­tively linked to recent gas drilling –  pose “a chronic health risk” in the Dimock area, accord­ing to an EPA Action Memorandum.

A bit of back­ground: ever since methane migra­tion prob­lems began occur­ring at pri­vate water wells in early 2009, Dimock has become ground zero in the bat­tle over hydraulic frac­tur­ing. Pennsylvania’s Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion blamed the methane con­t­a­m­i­na­tion on faulty gas wells drilled by Cabot Oil and Gas, and ulti­mately forced the com­pany to pay more than $4 mil­lion to affected fam­i­lies. Cabot main­tains it’s not respon­si­ble for the methane problems.

As part of their legal agree­ment, DEP forced Cabot to pro­vide water to more than a dozen Dimock fam­i­lies. But in Decem­ber, the agency deter­mined the com­pany had met its require­ments, and released it from the obligation.

That set off a firestorm of anti-drilling protests in the north­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia com­mu­nity. (Mark Ruf­falo even showed up.)

A few weeks later, the EPA began inves­ti­gat­ing the sit­u­a­tion.  This memo is the first direct action the fed­eral gov­ern­ment has taken in Dimock.

(Click here to see our app plot­ting every pro­duc­ing nat­ural gas well in Dimock.)

The doc­u­ment states, “his­toric drilling activ­i­ties in the Dimock area may have used mate­ri­als con­tain­ing haz­ardous sub­stances. Spills and other releases have been doc­u­mented by [Pennsylvania’s Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion] from these drilling activ­i­ties.” The memo argues the pres­ence of these haz­ardous sub­stances gives the fed­eral agency author­ity to deliver water to the comes in question.

The doc­u­ment does point out “arsenic and man­ganese [another sub­stance found in the water] are nat­u­rally occur­ring sub­stances,” and notes fur­ther test­ing will occur.

This comes about a month and a half after Cabot Oil and Gas — the com­pany DEP found respon­si­ble for methane con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in the Dimock area — stopped deliv­er­ing water to these homes and other Dimock families.

(Why did DEP allow Cabot to stop pro­vid­ing water to Dimock fam­i­lies? We explained the deci­sion in this post.)

Here’s the full EPA Action Memorandum: