For some folks, walking while chewing gum is a bad idea. For a few others, smoking while washing hands might be dangerous. Turn on the faucet and… boom!
In northeastern Pennsylvania, a company that has been drilling lots of natural gas wells is providing “alternative water sources” to four homes after “reports of flammable vapor” emerging from their drinking water, the (Scranton, Pa) Times-Tribune reports.
The Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation has also had hired a contractor to inspect wells at two other homes in the Dimock Township area (north of Scranton), where the state Department of Environmental Protection found “a significant presence” of natural gas, according to the newspaper.
Nobody has washed their hands with flame….yet. But the investigation started because a local family's water well exploded on New Year’s Day, blowing apart a concrete slab in the family's front yard.
The company started to install the drinking water tanks after hearing reports that residents were performing a hair-curling experiment. They were filling up bottles from their taps, shaking them, uncapping the bottles and lighting matches – causing “puffs of flame,” according to the newspaper.
For all you out there concerned about polluted water, you might also add firewater to your list of things to test for.
Worries about tainted water tend to grow with increased natural gas drilling, in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and elsewhere. Drilling in Pennsylvania has soared in recent years, with 4,280 gas and oil drilling permits issued by the state in 2003 and 7,924 in 2008, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
“It’s up – way up,” said Teresa Zandori, press secretary for the state agency, told Bay Daily. She explained that the increase is in part because of the high value of natural gas, and also because of improved technology. Most of this rise has come from drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation in the northern part of the commonwealth, often using a technique called “fracking,” in which water is forced into the ground to facture the rock and push the gas out.
How often is natural gas escaping from these drilling operations and leaking into the drinking water of homes? “It’s uncommon, but I don’t have the exact numbers on that,” Zandori said.
Bay Daily would like to know. And I’m sure there are a few smokers out there who might be curious, too.
Mark Carmon, community relations coordinator for the northeast regional office of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said this afternoon that he doesn’t know if there is any trend over time in terms of numbers of complaints about drinking water being tainted by drilling.
But Carmon said that the gas in the drinking water in Dimock Township is clearly from drilling, and is not methane from bacteria or other microbes. “This Dimock Township area is a hotspot in our area for drilling,” Carmon said. “We’ve got an investigation going on right now, where we’ve got 20 homes we are looking at.”
At least nine of the homes have tested positive for gas in their water supplies, four at levels high enough for concern, Carmon said. It is those four homes to which the drilling company is supplying tanks of water or other alternative water supplies.
“We have been continuing the sampling of private wells in the area, and doing air monitoring in the homes, and we haven’t seen any natural gas vapors in the homes, which is good,” Carmon said.
Anyone out there in Pennsylvania or elsewhere with similar experiences to report?
Just a note: It is more than 20 Homes involved. Many cases have been reported in others states ie:Wyoming,Colorado, New Mexico, Ohio and Alabama. DEP has found fault with drilling company but has not stopped or curtailed drilling. People in area are frustrated, and every new story has a potential of being overstated. If anyone can help to bring some common sense to this, it would be greatly welcomed. If drilling could be the cause, would it not be best to temporarily stop all drilling? Is there another way to extract the gas? Without chemicals and large volumes of water?
Posted by: Bryan Fromm | 03/31/2009 at 08:37 AM
wow i hate this happened to anybody. I live in north carolina and this happened to a neighborhood close to me. they got a money settlement.
Posted by: drilling rigs | 04/04/2009 at 04:46 PM