Norma Fiorentino's drinking water well was a time bomb. For weeks, workers in her small northeastern Pennsylvania town had been plumbing natural gas deposits from a drilling rig a few hundred yards away. They cracked the earth and pumped in fluids to force the gas out. Somehow, stray gas worked into tiny crevasses in the rock, leaking upward into the aquifer and slipping quietly into Fiorentino's well. Then, according to the state's working theory, a motorized pump turned on in her well house, flicked a spark and caused a New Year's morning blast that tossed aside a concrete slab weighing several thousand pounds.
Fiorentino wasn't home at the time, so it's difficult to know exactly what happened. But afterward, state officials found methane, the largest component of natural gas, in her drinking water. If the fumes that built up in her well house had collected in her basement, the explosion could have killed her.
Dimock, the poverty-stricken enclave where Fiorentino lives, is ground zero for drilling the Marcellus Shale, a prized deposit of natural gas that is increasingly touted as one of the country's most abundant and cleanest alternatives to oil. The drilling here -- as in other parts of the nation -- is supposed to be a boon, bringing much-needed jobs and millions of dollars in royalties to cash-strapped homeowners.
But a string of documented cases of gas escaping into drinking water -- not just in Pennsylvania but across North America -- is raising new concerns about the hidden costs of this economic tide and strengthening arguments across the country that drilling can put drinking water at risk.
Dr. Alan Steinbach, Northeastern Hospital's Director of ICU describes the need Northeastern serves in the community and asks people to contact Ann Weaver Hart of Temple as well as elected officials to ask them how the need will be accounted for in the city if the hospital closes. Click here for "Who to Call" info . Also, check out Media Mobilizing's report on the Rally to Save Northeastern.
Every spring, horseshoe crabs converge along Delaware Bay beaches in the dark of night to spawn, timed with the arrival of migrating shorebirds who rely on crab eggs to refuel during their journey to their breeding grounds.
If you'd like to observe the crab mating rituals by moonlight, help monitor their numbers, and overturn stranded crabs that need a helping hand, join Delaware Riverkeeper Network on the evenings of May 22nd and June 5th at South Bowers Beach, DE. Delaware Riverkeeper Network takes part annually in the censusof crabs to help collect important data used to advocate for better protection of these amazing critters, so crucially important to the health of our Bay.
