The Honorable Lisa Jackson Office of the Administrator U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Room 3000, Ariel Rios Federal Building 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20460
Dear Administrator Jackson:
We are extremely frustrated with the actions of your Philadelphia Regional Office. We are being treated as expendable in a continuing effort by just 11 landowners to make financial claims against Cabot Oil and Gas. These claims have already been rebuffed by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the Commonwealth's Environmental Hearing Board after three full years of data gathering. Now, just as we thought the worst was over, your agency inserts itself into the matter at the request, not of the Commonwealth or the community, but trial lawyers, giving further credence to the baseless claims of their clients.
The facts are simple. Cabot and our DEP entered into an agreement to resolve outstanding issues regarding some of its early wells. Cabot met these terms and DEP, therefore, released Cabot from its obligations to deliver water to affected homeowners. These homeowners have been offered both treatment systems and financial settlements, which several accepted and are pleased with. Water tests indicate the treatment systems work and the Philadelphia Regional Office acknowledged there was no safety hazard as recently as a few weeks ago. However, the litigants are now complaining their wells have been affected by other contaminants. They have obtained legal counsel, hosted activist film-maker Josh Fox and have continually advanced a false-narrative through activists and the media while refusing any, and all, assistance offered by Cabot and DEP, as well as participation in the national water study your agency is conducting. They have also failed to allow regular testing and monitoring of their water supplies, although such tests as have been allowed reveal no case where your primary drinking water standards are not met.
The Philadelphia Regional Office's action in enabling this litigation threatens our livelihoods and is destroying our community reputation. Worse, EPA is relying upon hyped-up allegations regarding arsenic, manganese and sodium, all of which are known to be naturally occurring in our water supplies in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Even more outrageous is the twisting of EPA's Superfund authority, intended to help clean up abandoned hazardous waste sites, into a weapon for use by trial lawyers in bludgeoning Cabot for what is a non-issue. These actions are an assault on our property rights and basic freedoms. We urge you to rein in this rogue Regional Office.
cc:
The Honorable Michael Krancer, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
The Honorable Pat Toomey, United States Senator
The Honorable Bob Casey, United States Senator
The Honorable Tom Marino, United States Congress
The Honorable Tom Corbett, Governor, Pennsylvania