Spill Shuts Down Elk County Drilling Rig

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.

November 17, 2011 | 2:04 PM

The AP has details on a spill at an Elk County drilling site:

A company has halted Marcellus drilling in one northwestern Pennsylvania town after a kind of clay used to expedite the process spilled into a local reservoir.
Hunt Marcellus Operating Co. tells the Bradford Era ( http://bit.ly/vf5OUf) that it stopped drilling in Johnsonburg after some bentonite gel was released into Silver Creek and made its way into a drinking water reservoir controlled by the Johnsonburg Municipal Authority.
Bentonite is a form of impure clay that easily absorbs water and is used to facilitate gas and oil well drilling.