Resident tells Bradford County commissioners not to forget gas drilling problems

BY JAMES LOEWENSTEIN (STAFF WRITER)
Published: February 25, 2011

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Review Photo/JAMES LOEWENSTEIN Diane Ward of Standing Stone Township displays photos of homes in Wilmot and Terry townships that have water buffaloes.

TOWANDA - At the Bradford County commissioners' meeting on Thursday, Standing Stone Township resident Diane Ward held up a poster board on which were displayed the photographs of seven homes in Wilmot and Terry townships that have water buffaloes on the properties, which she said were provided by gas drilling companies.

She said the value of the homes has probably dropped 85 percent.

"In other words, these homes are worthless without water," she said.

"You can't say gas drilling is going very well and forget about people" whose water wells have been affected by it, she said.

She said that a public comment period is under way on proposed regulations on natural gas drilling that the Delaware River Basin Commission may adopt and she encouraged the Bradford County commissioners to read the regulations and provide comment on them.

In an interview after the meeting, Ward faulted the one Bradford County commissioner who has provided testimony on the regulations so far - Doug McLinko - for not mentioning in his testimony homes that have water buffaloes, or large tanks, or the bubbling up of methane in the Susquehanna River in the Sugar Run area.

Ward, who had, until December, served for years as the secretary/treasurer of Standing Stone Township, said the proposed regulations would be tougher than those of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, whose jurisdiction includes Bradford County.

And she said there is talk that, if adopted by the Delaware River Basin Commission, some of the regulations might in the future be adopted by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission.

The regulations would, among many other things, provide testing of aquifers before drilling, so that individual homeowners would not have to spend $500 or more testing their wells before drilling, she said.

McLinko had testified Tuesday at a public hearing in Honesdale on the Delaware River Basin Commission's proposed regulations, and he said in an interview on Thursday that the regulations would put gas drilling companies out of business.

One of the regulations would bar well pads from being constructed within 500 feet of water, including lakes, rivers, ponds, wetlands, or even a ditch along a road, McLinko said. Another proposed regulation would bar the cutting of more than three acres of timber per well pad, including the well pad itself, the driveway, and other aspects of the site, he said.

Those two regulations, together, "would shut gas drilling down," he said.

According to an Associated Press story about the public hearing, McLinko testified at the hearing that things are going well with the drilling in his area.

"We have about 1,500 wells permitted with just about 600 wells already drilled," McLinko testified. "We have water impoundments with fresh water ponds that are lined, they're safe, we have water extractions on the rivers, on the Susquehanna and three creeks."

In an interview on Thursday, McLinko said that he testified at the hearing that the Department of Environmental Protection and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission are doing a fine job of regulating water impoundment sites, water withdrawal sites and erosion and sediment control at gas well pads.

He said he also provided statistics in his testimony, which was limited to two minutes, on the large amount of gas drilling that is taking place in Bradford County.

"I feel for them (the residents with the water buffaloes)," McLinko said in the interview on Thursday.

"No one (in government) is going to compromise on well water safety," McLinko said in the interview. "If a water well gets messed up, we expect it to be fixed."

Gas drilling companies "that don't do a good job (by causing problems on residents' private property) need to be held accountable," McLinko said.

Ward said that one of the homes on the poster board had a methane level detected in it that was high enough to cause an explosion.

Daryl Miller, a Republican candidate for Bradford County commissioner, said that based on a conversation within the past week with one of the owners of the homes on the poster board, Don Pickett, Pickett's home and one of the other homes on the poster board now have a clean bill of health from the DEP as far as methane in their water and methane elsewhere on their property.

James Loewenstein can be reached at (570) 265-1633; or e-mail: jloewenstein@thedailyreview.com.

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