I had the fortune of having an extended holiday vacation this winter. The last place I stopped before returning home to Philadelphia was Allegheny County, one of the places where natural gas drilling is actively occurring. As I filled a glass of water from the sink, I hoped that Allegheny County did not have water contaminated from illegally dumped or incompletely treated fracking water. I was happy to know that I could return home to Philadelphia where I could drink tap water that was unaffected by natural gas drilling.
Upon returning home, I found this article waiting for me:
44,000 Barrels of Tainted Water Dumped Into Neshaminy Creek
In 2009 and part of 2010, energy company Cabot Oil & Gas trucked more than 44,000 barrels of well wastewater to a treatment facility in Hatfield Township, a Philadelphia suburb. Those liquids were then discharged through the town sewage plant into the Neshaminy Creek, which winds through Bucks and Montgomery counties on its way to the Delaware River.
Read more about the incident here and here.
Gas drilling feels like it is getting a little too close to home for me. Please contact your legislators and let them know that you are committed to clean waterways in Eastern Pennsylvania and they should be, too! TTF is compiling a database of natural gas drilling resources. We will soon be adding a complete list of government representatives in the TTF watershed. Until then, you can search for Pennsylvania legislators here.
