Tioga County Commissioners Meeting Dominated By Methane Questions

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

July 31, 2012 | 3:10 PM

A picture acquired by StateImpact Pennsylvania shows the Tioga County methane geyser five days after it first appeared.

The Williamsport Sun-Gazette reports a Tioga County Commissioner’s meeting was dominated by questions about Shell’s Union Township methane migration problems, which StateImpact Pennsylvania provided an update on yesterday.

Township resident Tom Cochran, who attended the meeting, said his concern was that “after the blowout up here, when they tested, they only tested for methane, and the residents were expecting a bit more thorough water test.
“We assumed we were going to have a baseline water test. They tested for methane, ethane and propane,” he said of Shell Appalachia.
He said he owns land near the site.
At this point, he said, “we still don’t know if our water was affected. We got the test results back and, as far as those three, we are fine,” he said, referring to methane, ethane and propane.
Cochran said he and his neighbors hired Seawald Laboratories in Williamsport to test for other contaminants that might be found in the water such as solids, magnesium, iron and the water’s pH level.