Driller To Stop Water To Families In Dimock, Pa.

MICHAEL RUBINKAM

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Families in a northeastern Pennsylvania village with tainted water wells will have to procure their own water for the first time in nearly three years as a natural-gas driller blamed for polluting the aquifer moves ahead with its plan to stop paying for daily deliveries.

Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. plans to end delivery of bulk and bottled water to 11 families in Dimock on Wednesday. Cabot asserts Dimock's water is safe to drink and won permission from state environmental regulators last month to stop paying for water for the residents. A judge on Wednesday declined to issue an emergency order compelling Cabot to continue the deliveries.

Several environmental groups urged the state Department of Environmental Protection to reverse course, saying Cabot has not met its legal obligation to restore the water supply.

"The department's decision is irresponsible given that Dimock residents have relied on the trucking of temporary fresh water for drinking, bathing and other household uses," Jeff Schmidt, director of the Sierra Club's Pennsylvania chapter, wrote to Pennsylvania Environmental Secretary Michael Krancer this week. "The residents' water supplies have not been restored, either in quantity or quality."

A December 2010 agreement between DEP and Cabot required the company to offer residential treatment systems that remove methane from the residents' water, and to pay them twice the assessed tax value of their homes. The agreement does not make the company liable for any chemicals or metals that have turned up in the residents' water, nor does it require the company to treat the water for anything other than methane.

Residents who are suing Cabot have appealed the settlement. They favor an earlier, scuttled DEP plan that would have forced the company to pay nearly $12 million to connect their homes to a municipal water line.