Why DEP Cut Chesapeake’s Fine In Half

The Post-Gazette takes a look at why the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion scaled back the fine it issued against Chesa­peake Energy this week:

The fine for the most high-profile inci­dent of the three — last April’s well blowout in Brad­ford County — was $190,000. Of that amount, $67,000 was to reim­burse DEP for its costs. That’s less than half of the $400,000 fine DEP’s staff first pro­posed for the inci­dent last year.

The rea­son for cut­ting the fine by more than half, accord­ing to DEP spokesman Kevin Sun­day, is that ini­tial test­ing indi­cated that three home­own­ers’ wells may have been impacted by the blowout. Doc­u­ments show that they had ele­vated lev­els of chlo­ride, bar­ium, stron­tium, iron and man­ganese, and there were spikes in sur­face sam­ples near where the flow­back fluid spilled dur­ing the blowout.

“But our orig­i­nal esti­mates were higher before the inde­pen­dent site char­ac­ter­i­za­tion study was filed,” Mr. Sun­day said.

That study, paid for by Chesa­peake and filed last fall, deter­mined the home­owner with the worst con­t­a­m­i­nated water had ele­vated lev­els of chlo­ride, bar­ium and stron­tium, but had a prob­lem spe­cific to his well and unre­lated to the spill — even though Chesa­peake had already agreed to help treat the water.