I don’t get the chance to see the Rocket-Courier much as it isn’t sold near where I live. This week, however, I picked up a copy as I spent the day in Tyler Memorial (in the waiting room, waiting for someone else) and became extremely bored.
On the first page, the headline grabbed me: Can Rural Drinking Water be Protected from Gas Drilling. Here is the link:
George Turner, a certified geologist, who is interviewed for the story, indicates that you can’t stop the drilling around you, but you can protect yourself legally by getting an independent party to take a water sample to a certified lab.
The importance of this is to maintain the “chain of custody”. This means that the water sample can be documented to have been taken at a specific location and transported via a third (independent) party to a certified lab for testing.
Once this is done, you have a record of what the water quality was on your property as of that day.
So, that being said, what about the water tests which were taken by the homeowner and sent off for testing. The first question which will be raised if there is a problem will be ” Can you prove where this sample came from?” Unless you have a disinterested third party taking the test and conveying it to a certified lab, you don’t have much to work with.
Good article. It ’s worth the read.
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The second article is entitled “Gas Boom Could Bring Wave of Philanthropy”. It is not available on the web currently, but it is an interesting read as well.
Here the author of the article explores a few of the limitless possibilities of what people could do in the area by combining a portion of their natural gas revenues for the betterment of the community. Of course, since the paper is based in Wyalusing, the areas mentioned are located primarily in Bradford County, but there are some which are pretty much universal.
Two well written articles which are worth the time and the $1.15 if you want the actual paper.
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