Water Wells

This article originally misstated the number of jobs the oil and gas industry supports. It is 9.6 million. By Chris Faulkner America is in the midst of an energy renaissance that's transforming communities. Consider Karnes County, Texas. A few years ago, the community was plagued by poverty. Today, it's not uncommon for local residents to collect $70 million each month in royalties for allowing energy companies to drill on their land. The wealth has increased the county's tax base almost six-fold in two years.

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - Pennsylvania environmental regulators are investigating the source of stray methane gas found in the North Branch Susquehanna River and six private water wells in Bradford County last week. Environmental Secretary John Hanger says the gas "probably . . . migrated through the ground as a result of drilling in the area. " He says the gas is most likely not from the Marcellus Shale, but from a shallower deposit. The Citizens' Voice of Wilkes-Barre reports that Chesapeake Energy is evaluating its natural gas wells in the area, and is taking corrective action.

Security guards have been posted at Camden's 16 water wells because of a strike by 33 employees of the city's water-management firm, officials said yesterday. City officials described the security at the wells, which are in Camden in Pennsauken, as a necessary precaution by United Water-Camden to protect the city's water. Camden's "interest is maintaining the health and safety of the residents," said Patrick J. Keating, director of the city's Department of Public Works. He added that the guards "were brought in by the firm, not by the city.

Chesapeake Energy will pay $1.6 million to settle allegations that its Marcellus Shale drilling caused methane to leak into the drinking-water wells of three homes in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The Oklahoma City gas producer will buy the homes as part of the settlement. The settlement was reached Thursday while the case was before an arbitration panel in Philadelphia. Chesapeake in 2011 paid $900,000 in fines to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for allowing gas to contaminate the water wells of 16 Bradford County homes, including the three on Paradise Road that settled this week.

Families in a northeastern Pennsylvania village with tainted water wells will have to procure their own water for the first time in nearly three years as a natural gas driller blamed for polluting the aquifer moves ahead with its plan to stop paying for daily deliveries. Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. ended delivery of bulk and bottled water to 11 families in Dimock on Wednesday. Cabot asserts Dimock's water is safe to drink and won permission from state environmental regulators last month to stop paying for water for the residents.

The editorial "Hold drillers accountable" (Oct. 7) took a predictable - and wrongheaded - position on a recent announcement made by Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger. For nearly a year, Cabot had been working diligently with DEP to address Carter Road water issues. Hanger told Cabot that the "final solution" to restoring clean water would be installing methane separator systems on the affected water wells. While Cabot does not agree that our activities caused the alleged problems with the well water of certain residents in Dimock Township, we provided potable water for an extended period of time, purchased methane separators, and offered to install them on all water wells deemed by DEP to have been "affected.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it would not take any action in response to tests of 16 more drinking-water wells in the embattled natural gas-drilling town of Dimock, Pa., and one resident whose well showed elevated levels of carcinogenic arsenic declined the agency's offer for alternative water. The test results largely reinforced findings the EPA released recently on its tests of 31 other residential water wells in the Susquehanna County township, where opponents and supporters of Marcellus Shale natural gas development have clashed.

Well-water tests of 20 more homes in the embattled natural-gas drilling town of Dimock, Pa. showed no contamination levels "that present a health concern based on risk assessments," a spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday. "This set of sampling did not show levels of contaminants that would give EPA reason to take immediate action," said Roy Seneca, a spokesman in EPA's regional office in Philadelphia. The test results reinforced initial findings the EPA released last month on its tests of 11 other residential water wells in the Susquehanna County township, the epicenter of a clash between opponents and supporters of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale formation.

East Pikeland Township residents living near the Kimberton Superfund site want clean drinking water. But they don't want to give up their private water wells and start paying public water bills in order to get it. Therein lies the problem with a proposed plan to clean up the Kimberton site, which in 1982 was placed on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list of hazardous waste sites targeted for cleanup. The Kimberton site, which borders Hares Hill and Cold Stream Roads and Route 113, was owned by the Ciba-Geigy Corp.

MUNCY, Pa. - State environmental officials are investigating new instances of methane contamination in residential water wells and a northern Pennsylvania stream near a Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling operation. The Department of Environmental Protection found the flammable gas in seven water wells in Lycoming County and gas bubbling into nearby Little Muncy Creek. That prompted XTO Energy Inc., a subsidiary of ExxonMobil Corp., to stop operations in the county and provide the well owners with bottled water.

This article originally misstated the number of jobs the oil and gas industry supports. It is 9.6 million. By Chris Faulkner America is in the midst of an energy renaissance that's transforming communities. Consider Karnes County, Texas. A few years ago, the community was plagued by poverty. Today, it's not uncommon for local residents to collect $70 million each month in royalties for allowing energy companies to drill on their land. The wealth has increased the county's tax base almost six-fold in two years.

In the new movie Promised Land , Matt Damon plays an energy worker in rural Pennsylvania who has a crisis of conscience about the environmental risks of the drilling method known as fracking. But the reality is much more promising than Promised Land suggests. If regulated effectively, fracking can contribute enormously to U.S. growth and energy independence while combating climate change. The United States has massive deposits of natural gas and oil in shale formations, much of them in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale and elsewhere in the Northeast.

TRY TO IMAGINE that you live in a nice suburban residential neighborhood and someone wants to open up an industrial chicken farm nearby — or maybe a fireworks factory or a steel mill. Surely, local zoning laws would not permit it, just as they would prohibit other commercial and industrial uses of residential areas. But Act 13, Pennsylvania's giveaway to the fracking industry, would allow natural-gas drilling in nearly any neighborhood where drillers want to drill, including towns whose zoning does not allow it. And there would be nothing you — or the local leaders you elected to protect your quality of life — could do about it. As part of a law that created impact fees for hydraulic fracturing, Act 13 allows natural-gas drilling in every zoning district, with some buffers: drilling has to be 300 feet from springs, rivers and wetlands; 500 feet from buildings and water wells, and 1,000 feet of drinking-water sources.

IN THE REGION Delta completes refinery buy Delta Air Lines on Friday finalized its purchase of the ConocoPhillips refinery in Trainer and will begin to bring back about 400 employees who were laid off last year when the plant was idled. A Delta spokesman said that its subsidiary, Monroe Energy L.L.C., will start a turnaround at the Delaware County refinery after the July 4 holiday with the aim of resuming fuel production this fall. The airline paid $180 million for the plant, with the Corbett administration chipping in $30 million on the condition that Monroe maintain 400 employees for five years.

Chesapeake Energy will pay $1.6 million to settle allegations that its Marcellus Shale drilling caused methane to leak into the drinking-water wells of three homes in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The Oklahoma City gas producer will buy the homes as part of the settlement. The settlement was reached Thursday while the case was before an arbitration panel in Philadelphia. Chesapeake in 2011 paid $900,000 in fines to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for allowing gas to contaminate the water wells of 16 Bradford County homes, including the three on Paradise Road that settled this week.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it would not take any action in response to tests of 16 more drinking-water wells in the embattled natural gas-drilling town of Dimock, Pa., and one resident whose well showed elevated levels of carcinogenic arsenic declined the agency's offer for alternative water. The test results largely reinforced findings the EPA released recently on its tests of 31 other residential water wells in the Susquehanna County township, where opponents and supporters of Marcellus Shale natural gas development have clashed.

Well-water tests of 20 more homes in the embattled natural-gas drilling town of Dimock, Pa. showed no contamination levels "that present a health concern based on risk assessments," a spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday. "This set of sampling did not show levels of contaminants that would give EPA reason to take immediate action," said Roy Seneca, a spokesman in EPA's regional office in Philadelphia. The test results reinforced initial findings the EPA released last month on its tests of 11 other residential water wells in the Susquehanna County township, the epicenter of a clash between opponents and supporters of natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale formation.

In the latest salvo over Marcellus Shale gas drilling in the embattled town of Dimock, a natural gas company on Tuesday alleged that federal regulators had cherry-picked old test data to distort the amount of contamination in drinking-water wells. Cabot Oil & Gas Co., whose drilling was blamed for the pollution, said that the drinking-water tests the Environmental Protection Agency used to justify its Jan. 19 order to deliver fresh water supplies to four Dimock houses "do not accurately represent the water quality" and are inconsistent with the body of data collected at the residences.

In the latest salvo over Marcellus Shale gas drilling in the embattled town of Dimock, a natural-gas company on Tuesday alleged that federal regulators had cherry-picked old test data to distort the amount of contamination in drinking-water wells. Cabot Oil and Gas Co., whose drilling was blamed for the pollution, said that the drinking-water tests the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency used to justify its Jan. 19 order to deliver fresh water supplies to four Dimock residences "do not accurately represent the water quality" and are inconsistent with the body of data collected at the residences.

Federal regulators said Thursday that they would deliver drinking water to four households near natural gas wells in the embattled town of Dimock, casting doubt on Pennsylvania's decision to allow a Marcellus Shale operator to halt deliveries in December. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also said it would conduct its own water sampling at 61 homes in the rural Susquehanna County township "to further assess whether any residents are being exposed to hazardous substances that cause health concerns.