HARRISBURG PATRIOT-NEWS / AP: …A paper published on Monday by Duke University researchers found that gas drilling in northeastern Pennsylvania did not contaminate nearby drinking water wells with salty water, which is a byproduct of the drilling.
“These results reinforce our earlier work showing no evidence of brine contamination from shale gas exploration,” said Robert Jackson, director of Duke’s Center on Global Change and a co-author of the paper, which appeared online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team evaluated 426 samples from groundwater aquifers in six counties.
The findings are noteworthy because last year the same Duke team found evidence that methane from gas wells had contaminated drinking water in Pennsylvania. That prompted harsh criticism from the top official at the state Department of Environmental Protection, who accused the researchers of bias and shoddy science… (more)
