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Dear RDA Members,

Remember those Tioga County cows that drank drilling flowback water? The incident made the front page of the Williamsport Sun Gazette.  The story began when a flowback pit (called a “pond” by drilling companies, but full of fracking chemicals, heavy metals and salt not usually found in ponds) had leaked through its plastic liner and flowed into the cows’ pasture.

The water the cows drank con­tained chlo­ride, iron, sul­fate, bar­ium, mag­ne­sium, man­ganese, potas­sium, sodium, stron­tium and cal­cium. The spill killed all veg­e­ta­tion in an area 30 feet by 40 feet. In early May, Pennsylvania’s Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture quar­an­tined the cows, wor­ried that the result­ing beef could be tainted and make peo­ple sick. East Resources, the drilling company responsible for the violation, objected to the quar­an­tine, say­ing it was “an unnec­es­sary step to take.”

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