Water Deliveries Stop For Westmoreland County Family

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.

January 26, 2012 | 3:56 PM

A drilling company that delivered drinking water to a Westmoreland County family for more than three years has stopped, according to the Tribune-Review.

For more than three years, Walter Sowa says a natural gas company told him not to drink his well water after it drilled near his Westmoreland County home.
“The water was so bad, they said not to wash my hands in it or use it for anything,” recalled Sowa, 60, of Sewickley Township.
Now, according to Sowa, Atlas Energy LP is telling him the water is OK to use again — and stopped trucking clean water to his home for free more than two weeks ago.
“I do not want to use that (water),” Sowa said. “I don’t even let my dogs drink it.”
Brian Begley, Atlas Energy’s vice president of investor relations, said the company tested the water and believes it is safe enough to consume.
“We feel like this is something that has improved substantially over time,” he said.