Hanger Slams CBS for Dimock Story

Susan Phillips/StateImpactPA

For­mer DEP Sec­re­tary John Hanger tes­ti­fies at an air qual­ity hearing.

For­mer Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Sec­re­tary John Hanger says CBS “botched” a piece about Dimock’s water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. The report aired on Sat­ur­day, and the link has no byline, but from the host intro, it sounds like the reporter’s name is Tony Gadda. (a search of his name with dif­fer­ent spellings didn’t turn up any­thing on the CBS website)

The reporter made a com­mon mis­take, he turned methane migra­tion into frack­ing, despite Hanger’s best efforts to the contrary.

What gets Hanger’s goat the most is that the CBS piece makes a direct link between Dimock’s water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and frack­ing. Imme­di­ately after mak­ing that con­nec­tion, the cam­era goes to Hanger him­self who says “there are 18 water wells that have been impacted by poor gas drilling in Dimock.”

That “poor gas drilling” had to do with the cement cas­ings, which Hanger found caused methane to leak into the water sup­plies, not frack­ing fluid.  Although play­ing a scene of flam­ing taps from Gasland, the piece didn’t make a dis­tinc­tion between methane con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and ground­wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­na­tion due to frack­ing flu­ids. But the piece does have this curi­ous note about the drilling process:

“Its at the sur­face where spills and blowouts cause chem­i­cally infused water to seep into the water table.…”

Some Dimock res­i­dents say their water is not sim­ply con­t­a­m­i­nated with high lev­els of methane, but also con­tains toxic chem­i­cals used in the frack­ing process. It’s not clear whether that con­t­a­m­i­na­tion could have been caused by sur­face spills, or frack­ing fluid migrat­ing into the aquifer, or nei­ther. Both the DEP and Cabot deny that frack­ing itself caused any con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in Dimock. The DEP never changed its mind about Cabot’s drilling prac­tices. It only changed its mind about forc­ing Cabot to sup­ply fresh water to affected homeowners.

(DEP’s agree­ment with Cabot dic­tat­ing water deliv­er­ies was put in place dur­ing the final weeks of the Ren­dell Admin­is­tra­tion. An ear­lier con­sent order between the agency and driller included water tests as one of the con­di­tions Cabot needed to meet before it could stop deliv­er­ing water. That pro­vi­sion was later removed. We explain how and why Cabot stopped deliv­er­ing water in this post.)

Frus­trated res­i­dents took their case to The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency. The CBS piece does get it right that the EPA does not seem so con­vinced Dimock’s water is safe to drink.  In a recent state­ment, the EPA lists a num­ber of cancer-causing tox­ins found in Dimock water wells that could have come from the frack­ing process. The EPA decided to deliver water to four res­i­dents, and test the well water of 66 house­holds. Results of those tests should be avail­able in about five weeks. But even if the find­ings show the water unsafe for human con­sump­tion, expect the debate over how those chem­i­cals ended up in the water wells along Carter Road, to continue.