Well Casing Problems Preceded Drinking Water Pollution

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.

February 28, 2012 | 10:54 AM

The AP takes a look at well casing problems that preceded possible drinking water contamination in a western Pennsylvania community, and the fact the Department of Environmental Protection never publicized Rex Energy’s casing issues:

At least two gas wells near a community that’s complained of sudden drinking water pollution developed casing problems during the drilling process, but neither Rex Energy Corp. nor state environmental regulators disclosed those problems during recent discussions about the contamination.
A cement well casing is meant to prevent natural gas or fluids from leaking into nearby aquifers during the drilling and hydrofracturing, or fracking, of wells.
There’s no proof that the casing problems — or reported environmental violations — at Rex drilling sites caused the water contamination for at least 10 households in the rural Woodlands community, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. But residents and environmental groups said on Monday that they were distressed to learn of the casing problems. The state Department of Environmental Protection, they said, doesn’t seem to understand that the lack of full transparency fuels public mistrust.