Gas Industry Decries Pennsylvania's Lack of Water Well Regs

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

July 8, 2011 | 4:34 PM

Chief Oil and Gas spokeswoman Kristi Gittins says there’s a lesson to be learned from the case of Crystal Stroud’s water.

“Rather than pointing the finger at companies, just assuming we’ve done something, when there’s obviously issues in that area and have been for a long time I think we need to look further into how we can address the longterm solution to improve the water well conditions. And a good place to start would be to set some water well construction standards, because right now there are none.”

That’s right. No statewide regulations exist on either water quality, or drilling standards. Some counties, like Montgomery and Chester, do have local regulations. But for the vast majority of the state’s 3 million rural residents who rely on private drinking water wells, it’s up to them to make sure what they’re drinking is safe.
Chief and state environmental regulators say drilling activity was not to blame for high levels of barium, methane and other contaminants in Stroud’s Bradford County water well. That’s not to say Chief has a crystal clean record in the state. Just last week DEP fined Chief $180,000 for a fracking fluid spill at a Marcellus Shale well in Jefferson County.

Stroud in the meantime, calls the DEP report on her water “a joke.”
Both DEP and Chief say barium exists naturally in Bradford County wells. That’s because there are spots where the former glacial sea-bed is close to the surface. Drill for water in those areas, even a shallow water well, and it could come up sea water.
Still, it’s unclear how Stroud’s water, which never tasted salty, would suddenly contain high enough levels of barium to make her sick.
And here’s another question we hope DEP can answer. If historical levels of barium exist in these areas, why were residents unaware of it?