Strangest Story of the Month -- EPA Cancels Drinking Water Tanker -- Why Are They Trucking in Drinking Water to Flush Toilets? -- Dickinson Press

Link here.

This has to be one of the strangest stories of the year.

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency abruptly changed its mind Saturday about delivering fresh water to residents of a northeastern Pennsylvania village where residential wells were found to be tainted by a natural gas drilling operation.

Only 24 hours after promising them water, EPA officials informed residents of Dimock that a tanker truck wouldn’t be coming after all. The about-face left residents furious, confused and let down — and, once again, scrambling for water for bathing, washing dishes and flushing toilets.

Agency officials would not explain why they reneged on their promise, or say whether water would be delivered at some point.

Exactly why is anybody trucking in drinking water to flush toilets, or even for showering for that matter?

Hey, lay a pipeline!

North Dakota has WAWS in place. They've been trucking water into Dimock for the past three years; they could have laid a pipeline by now. Unless someone is afraid of a drinking-water-pipeline spill.

You have to go through several google pages to get to some background.

Here is the January 6, 2011, story before the EPA changed its mind (less than 24 hours later):

Federal regulators are considering trucking to households in a Pennsylvania town where residents say wells have been polluted by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas.

Only a month after declaring water in Dimock safe to drink, the Environmental Protection Agency is reconsidering action after residents supplied the with hundreds of pages of data that link water pollution to fracking.

Dimock residents began complaining of cloudy, foul-smelling water in 2008 after Cabot Oil & Gas Corp began fracking, which involves injecting chemical-laced water and sand into wells to release gas in shale rock deep below the surface.

Environmentalists say fracking pollutes fresh water as fluids seep from drilling wells into aquifers and other supply sources.

Cabot had trucked water to a dozen Dimock households for three years until November when state regulators agreed it could stop. Now residents are onto the last of their water. Some are using pondwater for showers.

I can understand why the Dimock folks are confused.

This story is better written:

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has promised to deliver water to a northeastern Pennsylvania village where a natural gas driller has been accused of tainting homeowners' wells with methane and possibly hazardous chemicals, residents said Friday.

Homeowners in Dimock Township have been without a reliable supply of clean water since Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., the Houston-based drilling firm blamed for polluting their aquifer, stopped making daily deliveries more than a month ago.

Three Dimock residents said the EPA told them Friday that it's hiring a private contractor to deliver water to their homes, about 20 miles south of the New York state line. The EPA said Friday that no decision had been made.

The EPA told residents only a month ago their water was fine, then backtracked as more sampling data came in that the agency said merited further investigation.

Cabot won permission from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to stop daily deliveries of bulk and bottled water on Nov. 30. Since then, anti-drilling groups have been paying to have water delivered to about a dozen households. But the deliveries are sporadic and, with winter setting in, residents say they can't continue indefinitely. 

It's too bad the federal government isn't as interested in the Devils Lake, ND, problem as the Dimock Township, PA, problem.

But back to the Dimock dots:

• trucking in drinking water to flush toilets? Am I missing something here?
• using pondwater for showers? -- the EPA just said the water was safe to drink -- pondwater is safer than EPA "safe drinking water" for showering?
• "possibly" is the operative word
• no pipeline after three years of trucking drinking water? -- even western North Dakota planned and executed the WAWS project in less time -- and that covered a much larger area, and many, many more cities; even a third-world country can get pipeline for water; I think independent water providers put in pump stations for fracking companies within months in the North Dakota oil patch
• why is the federal govt trucking in water, and not the state?

Too bad we don't have Sam Kinison around any more:

World Hunger, Sam Kinison