The change to your water is obvious:

• It smells bad

• It looks worse

• Your faucet is spurting

Without a baseline water test that proves your water was clean before drilling, gas companies won't own up to any of these changes

Industry Claim: You say we caused the contamination?  Prove it!

Industry Claim: Someone else did it.  Be prepared to answer questions like these from their lawyers

• Have you ever done car repairs at home?  Ever change your oil?
• How do you heat your home?  Oil?
• Do you gas up your lawn mower or ATV on your property?

Industry Claim: Many contaminants occur naturally in PA groundwater.  And they're right!

• Methane: natural deposits, near coal formations
• Radium and Radon: an estimated 40% of homes in PA have elevated radon levels above EPA's action guideline
  
• Arsenic: natural deposits. Elevated levels recently seen in Honesdale, PA
  
• Hydrogen sulfide gas (rotten egg): very common in wells in certain shale formations
• Iron: common in sandstone / shale aquifers
• Manganese: often occurs with iron
• Hard water:  especially in limestone areas

The battle in Dimock should be settled... but it's not.

• Despite claims that Dimock has always had methane in its water, DEP's geologist Fred Baldassare determined, "The gas found in these water wells is not consistent wth microbial gas that occurs in some shallow aquifer systems.  "Results for the analyses reveal... Marcellus gas."

Industry Claim: Land use impacts groundwater.  Right again!

• Gas stations, industry, urban areas: petroleum products
• Mining: methane, metals
• Landfills: methane
• Roads: chloride, sodium
• Houses and septic systems: bacteria, nitrate, sediment, and pesticides and lawn chemicals
• Agriculture: bacteria, nitrates, pesticides

Industry Claim: Lots of pollution is already in groundwater.  Right also!

Underground Storage Tanks

• There are approximately 611,000 underground storage tanks (USTs) nationwide that store petroleum or hazardous substances
• Over 488,000 Underground Storage Tank (UST) leaks had been confirmed as of September, 2009.  About 100,000 UST sites remaining to be cleaned up
• Thousands of releases of petroleum products (mostly gasoline) from storage tanks, above and below ground, have been reported in Pennsylvania  

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)

• In a study by the US Geological Survey, almost 20 percent of the water samples from public and private wells contained one or more of the 55 VOCs tested for

If I need a lawyer...

How much would it cost to litigate a lawsuit?  $5,000?  $10,000?  More?

• Lawyers who represented about 10,400 leasers in a class action lawsuit against NiSource Inc. and Chesapeake Energy will receive about $125 million in legal fees.   Judge Tom Evans awarded the fees because of the six years of work the lawyers performed.  The Western Virginia Record, December 15, 2008

Will a lawyer take my case on contingency (i.e., get paid out of the verdict award)?

• Environmental attorneys will usually only take toxic tort cases on contingency
  • Toxic tort is a personal injury lawsuit in which the plaintiff claims that exposure to a chemical caused the plaintiff's injury or illness
  • See the movies Erin Brokovich or A Civil Action

• Outside of a toxic tort cases, most attorneys don't take environmental cases on contingency
  • Costs for litigation and experts are too high
  • Attorney’s fees and litigation costs are generally not available