Environmental Protection Agency official Ayn Schmit included a slideshow in her presentation last week on the latest findings in the ongoing investigation into drinking water contamination in and around Pavillion, Wyoming.
Click here or on the image above to view a PDF of that slideshow.
Many readers will find this slideshow more accessible and more useful in some ways than the EPA’s official November 2011 written report, which can be found here.
Area residents have said for years that their domestic water wells were good and clean until an oil and gas company started drilling and hydraulically fracturing or “fracking” near their homes to produce natural gas.
The latest EPA report includes details of the chemical contamination found in water wells that were drilled by the EPA for the purposes of the agency’s investigation.
Those wells were found to be contaminated by dangerous levels of cancer-causing benzene, methane, diesel- and gasoline-grade compounds and at least one chemical often used in hydraulic fracturing.
We will be publishing more on last week’s public meeting and the EPA’s most recent discoveries on this blog in the coming days.
The EPA is continuing to recommend that affected residents in the Pavillion area do not drink their well water or use it for cooking.
Other posts you might want to see:
Hydraulic fracturing: what we’d like to achieve
UW hydraulic fracturing forum benefited from public involvement
NYT: Fracking has contaminated drinking water
NPR: Worries over water as fracking becomes pervasive
Fracking linked to water contamination
Fracking not as safe as industry claims
‘I asked them for the data and they wouldn’t share it’