Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, agreed that the water supplies should be tested to put public concerns to rest.
"We'd absolutely support additional testing," Klaber said. "It's important to know the levels that might be entering water supplies."
But beyond the calls for more testing, there was little agreement about the significance of the risk to water supplies. Industry officials played down the threat from radioactive materials that naturally occur in deep rock formations, saying that elevated radioactivity at the well site is far different from the diluted material that is discharged into waterways. Anti-drilling advocates said that radioactive material was only one of many pollutants associated with drilling that require stricter regulation.
U.S. Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D., N.Y.), who has introduced legislation to impose more federal regulation on gas drilling, called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force states to test waterways for a range of materials associated with hydraulic fracturing, the controversial technique that drillers use to release natural gas locked up in the mile-deep formation.
"Given this new information about natural gas drilling wastewater containing radioactive materials at levels ranging from hundreds and even thousands of times higher than what is considered acceptable, EPA should immediately require that all drinking water intakes within active natural gas drilling areas be tested for radioactivity and all other toxic substances," Hinchey wrote to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.
