A New Policy For Dealing With Drilling-Related Water Contamination

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.

October 15, 2012 | 11:30 AM

Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection is changing the way it handles Marcellus Shale-related water contamination cases, according to the Post-Gazette:

[The new policy has] department administrators in Harrisburg instead of field offices decide whether residential water users should receive letters notifying them about problems.
The month-old policy hasn’t stopped, held up or altered any contaminated-water determination letters. And the DEP said in response to questions that it would not result in delays to homeowners about water contamination.
However, critics are concerned that the policy allows high-level DEP officials in Harrisburg to decide not to issue, or delay issuing, contamination determination letters recommended by a field office. A decision not to make that determination could save drilling companies millions of dollars in groundwater remediation, water treatment or replacement costs, and lengthen the time it takes to fix the problems.