Despite EPA’s Findings, Dimock Residents Need Clean Water

View more images on our Flickr site

This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it will conduct no further testing in Dimock, Pennsylvania, on the basis of its findings that the water in Dimock is largely safe to drink.

The EPA results, however, do not refute the fact that Cabot Oil & Gas’s irresponsible drilling practices contaminated the Dimock families’ drinking water with dangerous levels of explosive methane, as the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PA DEP) has already concluded.  This finding alone has a significant detrimental impact on the Dimock residents’ health and well-being, their property values, and is a reasonable basis for Dimock families not to drink water from the tap.

It has been nearly eight months since Cabot was allowed, with PA DEP’s permission, to stop delivering water to Dimock.  Riverkeeper has kept a clock on its website tracking the time since Cabot’s water deliveries ceased as a reminder that Dimock is still in desperate need of a clean water solution.  EPA’s findings do not change this fact, nor do they alleviate the mounting concerns nationwide that fracking can contaminate drinking water supplies.