EPA Says Gaps Exist in Dimock, PA Water Tests
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is once again stirring up trouble in Dimock, PA by “reopening” a review of Dimock Township water supplies after recent tests from a private testing service hired by Cabot Oil & Gas turned up “gaps” in the data that the EPA wants to explore. This is less than a month after the EPA sent a letter to residents, on Dec. 2, telling them the same test results showed well water in the area “does not present an immediate health threat to users” (see this MDN story for a copy of the letter).
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Competition to attract an ethane cracker plant is heating up. West Virginia has made no bones that they intend to be the winners of the investment that will be made to build an ethane cracker plant to be built by Shell. The plant will cost upward of $2 billion and will create thousands of jobs to build the plant, operate the plant, and just as importantly, in the industries that will locate near the plant once it’s operational. It’s an economic jackpot worth $5 billion or more, and those who are in the game to attract it are in it to win.
Last Friday, Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board Judge Bernard Labuskes, Jr. denied an appeal from 11 families in the Carter Road area of Dimock Township, PA who were asking that water shipments from Cabot Oil & Gas be restored. The 11 families, from an original group of 19 families, decided to not accept a remediation solution ordered by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that directed Cabot to pay the families up to twice the value of their homes and to install filtration systems that would remove all methane from their water supplies.