Warning–Water testing as ruse to Hold a Gas Lease
June 16, 2011
This is also very possibly related to the “Duke” study on methane in water wells. The Duke study concluded that a) water wells withn 3000 ft of a gas well had about a 50% liklihood of dangerously high levels of methane, and b) that beyond 3000 ft the levels of methane were quite low.
This latter result is the “baseline issue for which the Duke study was criticized. That is “around here most water wells have methane in them and so that could not be a result of gas drilling.” This is how the O&G folks characterize things.
According to a 5-17-11 ProPublica article, the O&G Cos are sitting on thousands of such test data and will not release them.
My conclusion after a review of the baseline literature on this (thin as it is) is that the data are just enough to make a scientifically credible statement that “dangerous levels of methane in drinking water, absent nearby gas drilling, are very rare, probably likely to occur in less than 1% of water wells.
Thus, it is possible that this testing gambit, as noted below, is an attempt by industry to collect data favoring their position or possibly by a lawsuit firm attempting to gather data for a lawsuit, or some other kind of scam related to water quality that attempts to sell water quality mitigation stuff to unwitting homeowners (this is fairly likely since we know USGS data that 20-40% of water wells are contaminated, most with bacteria).
Of course we do not know what the purported testing may be for or even if the assertion about “certified letters” is legit.
S
Stan Scobie, Binghamton, NY <scobies@frontiernet.net> 607-669-4683
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2011 12:40 AM
Subject: Water Testing Request
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GDACC 
