Researchers from Duke University plan to return to Pennsylvania this week to conduct additional testing of residential water wells in the northeastern part of the state, including wells that are not currently near any Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling.

Robert Jackson, a biology professor and the director of the university’s Center on Global Change, told NGI that he and about six other researchers will be in the state for about a week to continue sampling water wells that have been contaminated by methane and will try to determine the source of the stray gas. He said the team will also conduct some air sampling.

“We’re expanding our geographic coverage, working in additional counties,” Jackson said. “We’ll be expanding from the original study area and going to the southwest.”

Duke released a previous study on the contaminated wells in May, which was derided as “biased science” by officials with the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and caused a stir in the natural gas industry (see NGI, June 13; May 16). The original study focused on Bradford, Lackawanna, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming counties in Pennsylvania and neighboring Otsego County in New York.

Jackson acknowledged the criticism that was leveled against the previous study, including that it relied on a small sample of wells (68) and wasn’t performed by geologists. He said researchers would take baseline samples from water wells in areas where drilling had not occurred, sampling another 80 to 130 water wells this summer, as a way to address some of that criticism.

“We’re always looking for baseline measurements,” Jackson said. “We’re resampling some of our original baseline measurements, and taking some are in places that have since been drilled. We’re just trying to get more data.”

Jackson said Duke would more than likely release another report, possibly two, on the issue of the contaminated water wells before the end of the year. A separate report on air quality would be released sometime in the future.

Travis Windle, spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC), told NGI that the researchers’ return to Pennsylvania was a positive development.

“In admitting that they did not establish any baseline data in their five-page report [from May], the Duke researchers fundamentally put the cart before the horse in their claims that shale gas development and hydraulic fracturing were responsible for elevated levels of methane in selectively chosen private water wells,” Windle said. “It’s our hope, however, that the group’s next trip to Pennsylvania will yield scientifically sound research, as we believe that lodging unsubstantiated and highly charged claims not grounded in facts is largely unnecessary.”

On July 20 Temple University announced that a faculty panel will investigate the source of methane gas that has contaminated water wells in Susquehanna County, PA (see NGI, July 25). Meanwhile, the DEP said June 17 that it would try to determine how water wells and a nearby stream in Lycoming County, PA, have become contaminated by methane.

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