Polluted Water in Marcellus Shale

For an industry that says there is no “PROOF” any water has been polluted from hydraulic fracturing…blah, blah, there sure is a lot of polluted water where hydraulic fracturing has occurred.

Ponoco Record

The event began with a video showing fracking damages to a 141-acre farm in Hickory, near Pittsburgh, where land has been drilled for more than a year, and residents have recently been advised to drink bottled water because of feared water toxicity. The farm’s owner, Ronald Gulla, said he never would have signed the lease if he had known that in 2005 the oil and gas industries were granted exemptions from the Safe Drinking Water Act. The film shows streams on his property slimy and foaming, violations of the Clean Water Act; vegetation has vanished; the fish in his pond are gone; and the pond, said Gulla, smells different.

“The land is raped. It’ll never be the same. Who’ll buy it?” he asked rhetorically. He described constant noise at all hours from trucks coming and going with water.

Gulla was also in the audience. In a later conversation, he said that if he rinsed his mouth with water in the morning, there was a metallic taste in his mouth throughout the day. Worried about his children’s health and his own, he was moving his family to his mother’s house.

Providing an overview was Barbara Arrindell, a founder of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, who has a degree in bioengineering and, as a member of the Artery collective, makes fine glassware. She described fracking damage in western states, pointing to Eunice, N.M., a fracking location where methane odors linger for 40 miles around. Arrindell said that with explosive methane in the water, the area is now “uninhabitable.”