Enviro Turf War: DEP Pushes Back Against EPA Ruling

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 26, 2011 | 12:19 PM

The latest turf war between Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection and the federal Environmental Protection Agency centers over whether or not a Huntington County farmer polluted a neighbor’s drinking well. More from the Altoona Mirror:

Kenneth Brockett of Huntingdon Furnace Road, Warriors Mark Township, doesn’t believe the contamination is coming from his fields, where he grows corn to feed his 120-cow herd. But he said he will drill a new well for the neighbor who for years has complained that his water has been contaminated by the manure spread on Brockett’s fields.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released an order this week, telling Brockett to begin immediately to provide potable water to the John and Cindy O’Rourke family, who live about a half mile away. He must also develop a “mitigation plan” to eliminate the contamination.
Fines up to $16,500 daily may be assessed for non-compliance, the EPA said.
The O’Rourkes declined comment.
The state Department of Environment Protection sent the EPA a letter disagreeing with its decision to intervene. While the Brockett farm may contribute to the contamination, “no primary source of contamination to the [O’Rourke’s] well could be determined,” the DEP letter stated.

DEP Secretary Mike Krancer has made no secret of his disdain for federal interference. In April, he fired off an especially snarky letter to the agency, after the EPA began asking questions about whether or not Pennsylvania was testing for radioactive materials in drinking water. Last month, he called proposed Delaware River Basin Commission regulations “duplicative and unnecessary.”