In a May 19th article published in the Scranton Times-Tribune, Laura Legere discusses data that she has compiled from a Right-to-know law request to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP). The data show 969 complaints between 2008 and the fall of 2012. According to the article, 161 of these complaints include determination letters where PADEP indicates some sort of link between oil and gas activity and impacted groundwater supplies. The Times-Tribune data has been geolocated and mapped by the FracTracker Alliance:
Map showing groundwater complaints to PADEP from 2008 through Fall 2012. Orange-red dots indicate instances where PADEP has established come connection between drilling activity and groundwater impacts, yellow dots mean that PADEP analysis is still pending, and green dots indicate that PADEP has not established such a connection. Please note that the locations are not exact, and that in many instances there are multiple records at a single location on the map. Click on “Fullscreen” to access additional mapping tools.
According to our correspondence with Ms. Legere, there are future plans to release the source documents to the public as well, once needs to protect the privacy of the complainants have been addressed.
We have also added this data to our US Map of Suspected Well Water Impacts:
US Map of Suspected Well Water Impacts. Here, the Times-Tribune data have been represented by light blue dots. Due to crowding from other layers, it is necessary to zoom in to Pennsylvania to see all of the data. For more information on this map, please click on “Fullscreen” and then the “About” tool.
