Bradford County Blow-Out Costs Chesapeake More Than $250K

The Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion has levied the high­est fine pos­si­ble against Chesa­peake Energy for three sep­a­rate inci­dents. A blow-out in Brad­ford County, which made national news, will cost Chesa­peake more than $250,000 in fines and reim­burse­ments. Last May Chesa­peake got hit with a $1million dol­lar fine for con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the water of 16 house­holds in Brad­ford County.

The Okla­homa City-based com­pany will also pay for con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing a high-quality des­ig­nated stream in Pot­ter County with sed­i­ment. The sed­i­ment also entered water treat­ment fil­ters in Gale­ton Bor­ough. The com­pany paid $190,000 to repair the water treat­ment facil­ity. In North Towanda, Brad­ford County, the DEP says Chesa­peake also allowed sed­i­ment to enter Sugar Creek. For all three inci­dents the DEP fined Chesa­peake a total of $565,000.

In a frack oper­a­tion gone wrong, Chesapeake’s Atgas 2H well spilled ten thou­sand gal­lons of salty, chemical-laden fluid in Leroy Town­ship last April. The frack water made its way into the Towanda Creek. Seven fam­i­lies were evac­u­ated while Chesa­peake work­ers and a pri­vate con­trac­tor from Texas took six days to bring the well under control.

]Kevin Sun­day is a spokesman for the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Protection.

“We’ve since worked with Chesa­peake to insure a com­mit­ment that they will have local well con­trol respon­ders on site in the event that there’s any fur­ther inci­dents,” says Sunday.

The DEP says tests show no dam­age to the local ground­wa­ter. Chesa­peake says no nearby pri­vate water wells were con­t­a­m­i­nated by the inci­dent. But a Novem­ber report issued by an arm of the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol found high lev­els of salts and methane in a nearby res­i­den­tial water well. The Agency for Toxic Sub­stances and Dis­ease Reg­istry says the con­t­a­m­i­nants reflect gas drilling, but it wasn’t clear whether the spill was the source of the salts and methane.

A state­ment released by the com­pany says Chesa­peake has coop­er­ated with the DEP.

“Chesa­peake worked proac­tively with all appro­pri­ate reg­u­la­tory agen­cies through­out the response and analy­sis of these inci­dents to achieve com­pli­ance, iden­tify and imple­ment oper­a­tional improve­ments and ensure proper res­o­lu­tion,” said Brian Grove, senior direc­tor of Cor­po­rate Devel­op­ment for Chesapeake’s East­ern Division.

Chesa­peake also agreed to con­tin­ued water test­ing and reme­di­a­tion at the sites.