[Griff]

EPA: Water quality OK in Pa. gas drilling town
Contamination in Dimock wells within safe levels, it says

SCRANTON, Pa. -- Federal environmental regulators said Thursday that well water testing at 11 homes in a northeastern Pennsylvania village where a gas driller was accused of polluting the aquifer failed to show elevated levels of contamination.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which is sampling well water at dozens of homes in Dimock, Susquehanna County, said initial test results "did not show levels of contamination that could present a health concern."

Dimock has been at the center of a fierce debate over the environmental and public health impacts of Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale drilling industry.

State environmental regulators had previously determined that Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. contaminated the aquifer underneath homes along Carter Road in Dimock with explosive levels of methane gas. Residents who are suing Cabot assert their water is also polluted with drilling chemicals. Many other residents of Dimock say that the water is clean and that the plaintiffs are exaggerating problems with their wells to help their lawsuit.