In a Monday, Feb. 13, 2012 photo, Ray Kemble pumps water from a truck
into his neighbor's tank in Dimock, Pa. The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency appears to be ramping up its interest in the Marcellus
Shale a rock formation in Pennsylvania and surrounding states that is
believed to hold the nations largest reservoir of gas with
investigations in both the northeastern and southwestern corners of
Pennsylvania. The drilling industry accuses EPA of overreach. (AP
Photo/Matt Rourke)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's testing of scores of water
wells will give residents of a small northeastern Pennsylvania village a
snapshot of the aquifer they rely on for drinking, cooking and bathing.
The first EPA test results, expected this week, are
certain to provide fodder for both sides of a raging 3-year-old debate
over unconventional natural gas drilling and its impacts on Dimock, a
rural crossroads that starred in the Emmy Award-winning documentary
"Gasland."
A handful of residents are suing Cabot Oil & Gas
Corp., saying the Houston-based driller contaminated their wells with
potentially explosive methane gas and with drilling chemicals. Many
other residents of Dimock assert the water is clean, and that the
plaintiffs are exaggerating problems with their wells to help their
lawsuit.
In a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, a
pro-drilling group called Enough is Enough contends the agency's "rogue"
Philadelphia field office has allowed itself to be a pawn of trial
lawyers seeking a big payout from Cabot. More than 300 people signed it.
"Dimock Proud" signs dot lawns throughout the village in Susquehanna
County, one of the most intensively drilled regions of the Marcellus
Shale gas field.
The same group recently launched a website aimed at
dispelling what it contends is the myth that Dimock's aquifer is
contaminated.
Residents who have been clamoring for federal
intervention say the attacks on the EPA — which have come not only from
their neighbors but from Cabot and Pennsylvania's environmental chief —
are groundless.
"Since the EPA's investigation began, Cabot and (state
regulators) have undertaken a shameless public campaign against the
EPA's attempt to rescue the victims who are now without potable water
and prevent their exposure to hazardous constituents now present in the
aquifer," one of their lawyers, Tate Kunkle, wrote recently. "One would
ask why Cabot and the department would oppose the EPA's study of the
aquifer and oppose further sampling if they were so sure the aquifer was
not contaminated."
Water is an important element in our life but I don't know that many countries don't pay attentions to this serious issue.
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