After 14 years of legal wrangling, a fracking firm that poisoned a small town in Pennsylvania's drinking water, agreed to pay nearly $16.3 million for the construction of a new public water supply and pay residents' water bills for 75 years.
Craig Stevens, left, of Silver Lake Township, Pennsylvania, and Ray Kemble, right, of Dimock, Pennsylvania, show water samples collected from Dimock, Pennsylvania, during a rally on fracking-related water investigations, on October 10, 2014, outside the EPA's Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
After years of legal wrangling, the company formerly known as Cabot Oil & Gas agreed to plead no contest to 15 criminal violations of state environmental laws and pay nearly $16.3 million for the construction of a new public water supply for Dimock. Activists say some Dimock residents went years without access to clean tap water, and Coterra Energy, the company that bought Cabot, will pay their water billswith Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro.
Located in rural northwestern Pennsylvania, Dimock became ground zero for the debate over fracking on January 1, 2009, when a resident’s water well exploded after filling with methane. Residents had already suffered from strange rashes and headaches for several months, and at least one family was evacuated from their home,to the environmental group Food & Water Watch.
“Finally, some justice,” said Ray Kemble, a Dimock resident whose water was contaminated, in a statement. “This case proves once and for all that drilling and fracking contaminated our drinking water.” Back in 2009, fracking was a relatively new technology allowing producers to drill or “frack” horizontally in vast underground shale formations that were rich in oil and gas but largely inaccessible to conventional drilling. The Obama administration embraced fracked natural gas as a “bridge fuel” that would allow the U.S. to reduce coal consumption and meet climate goals, and the industry was engaged in an intense campaign to win over lawmakers and assure the public that fracking is “safe.
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