Pennsylvania residents blame illness on natural gas extraction
There is a lot of construction near Janet McIntyre’s home in southwestern Pennsylvania. It’s not new houses, but new industry: 10 gas wells, a compressor station and multiple drilling-waste ponds.
McIntyre never worried about her water before. When she looks out on the wooded rural landscape from her front porch she talks about her well water liked a cherished lost friend. “We never ran out of water. We never had a problem with our water. It was cold coming out of the spigot just as if you went to a regular spring and got it. It was gorgeous water.”
Then one night McIntyre got sick. She had a bad headache and vomited. When her husband Fred went for a glass of water and turned on the spigot, it spewed out smelly foam. “He hollers back, I think I know why we’re sick,” she remembers. “There’s something wrong with our water.”
The McIntyres stopped drinking the well water. Neighbor Kim McEvoy says her water turned black and she got sick too. “My fingernails were growing downward. My hair was falling out. I’d get dizzy.”
Initial tests of McIntyre’s well water showed unsafe levels of toluene, a volatile and toxic petrochemical that causes nausea and headaches. McEvoy’s well water had arsenic. Now, months later, new company tests say the water is safe to drink, although trace chemicals are still present.
Point Your RSS Reader to FrackCheckWV.net/feed/
