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Pa. lets polluter resume drilling in protected zone, outraging Dimock residents in fracking’s ‘ground zero’

The order was quietly signed on the same day that residents celebrated the energy company’s plea deal on charges of environmental crimes.

Ray Kemble, left, of Dimock, Pa., and Renee Vogelsang hold a sign outside the Susquehanna County Courthouse in Montrose, Pa., Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2022. Pennsylvania's most active gas driller has pleaded no contest to criminal environmental charges in a landmark pollution case.
Ray Kemble, left, of Dimock, Pa., and Renee Vogelsang hold a sign outside the Susquehanna County Courthouse in Montrose, Pa., Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2022. Pennsylvania's most active gas driller has pleaded no contest to criminal environmental charges in a landmark pollution case.Read moreMatt Rourke / AP

On the same day that the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office reached a plea agreement with an energy company on charges of environmental crimes dating more than a decade in the town of Dimock, state regulators quietly signed a consent order allowing the company to drill beneath an area that had been subject to a 12-year moratorium on such activity.

The decision has outraged residents who’ve lived with the pollution tied to Coterra Energy’s previous fracking activity and endured more than a decade in which they’ve lacked access to clean water for their homes.

“We’re just puppets,” said Ray Kemble, 30-year Dimock resident of the nine-square-mile moratorium zone and water pollution victim, who stood next to Attorney General and Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro the day he applauded his office for reaching a conclusion to the years-long battle for clean water in the area.

» READ MORE: Inside the 14-year battle to secure a water line for fracking’s ‘ground zero’

On Nov. 29, Coterra Energy and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) signed a consent order allowing the operator, one of the largest natural gas producers in the state, to drill laterally beneath an area that has been mostly fracking-free since 19 households found methane in their water in 2008 and 2009.

On Nov. 4, 2009, the DEP signed a consent order tying drilling by Coterra — then called Cabot Oil and Gas, prior to a merger with Cimarex Energy Co. in 2021 — to household water pollution, banning the company from drilling new natural gas wells in the area entirely. Following the new consent order, Coterra will now be allowed to drill horizontally underneath the nine-square-mile protected zone, as long as the top hole of a well is drilled outside of it. (Fracking involves drilling vertically for thousands of feet underground, then horizontally, carving an L-shaped path.)

The consent order was not announced to residents nor mentioned during a Nov. 29 plea hearing at which many celebrated a long-sought victory: Coterra agreed to pay $16.29 million for clean water wells and a water line to provide clean water to residents who have been deprived of such for more than a decade, as well as $58,000 to each affected household to cover its water bills for the next 75 years. The new order allowing lateral drilling represents the fulfillment of a request Coterra has made to regulators numerous times over the last 13 years.

“Based upon the remedial work of Cabot … Coterra is requesting that the department allow new drilling and hydraulic fracturing of wells with surface locations outside the Dimock/Carter Road Area and laterals that traverse under and produce the Dimock/Carter Road Area,” the consent order reads. “New drilling or hydraulic fracturing is currently restricted by the 2010 COSA.”

Environmental groups around the state have expressed disappointment in the DEP’s decision, including Karen Feridun, head of the Better Path Coalition, which advocates for clean energy in the Keystone State. When she got word of the new consent order, Feridun quickly launched an online petition calling on Shapiro to ban fracking in Dimock entirely.

The order sets out terms for Coterra’s lateral drilling beneath the nine-square-mile moratorium zone, including that the operator “case and cement a well to … [p]revent pollution or diminution of fresh groundwater,” and “prevent gas, oil, brine, completion and servicing fluids” from “entering fresh groundwater.” The DEP confirmed to Capital & Main in November that Coterra had been cited for 1,167 environmental violations since the first consent order was drafted in November 2009 and it was originally banned from new fracking in the moratorium zone.

The water line is referenced in the consent order, mandating that Coterra fulfill its $16.29 million water line agreement with the Attorney General’s Office by 2027, a date that the order notes could be subject to change. The order also requires that Coterra offer residents water treatment in the meantime, but it does not include mention of water delivery as was spelled out in the Nov. 29 plea hearing.

As Capital & Main reported previously, some Dimock residents are skeptical of water treatment systems and at least one system repeatedly failed. Should residents reject the systems this time around, Coterra will be deemed to have met its obligations to secure them clean water should they deposit money into a “mitigation fund,” the order notes.

» READ MORE: Gas driller pleads no contest to polluting town’s water

The gas company’s ability to drill laterally appears partially contingent upon the company offering residents water treatment systems. Coterra appears to be moving quickly to fulfill this requirement; company representatives have already contacted several residents about systems. One resident who spoke to Capital and Main on the condition of anonymity said they were contacted by a Coterra representative within a few days of the Nov. 29 plea hearing.

“Whoever negotiated this behind closed doors without our knowledge, consent or approval has not asked our opinions, given us options, or even gone over it with us,” the resident said of the new consent order.

The Attorney General’s Office told Capital & Main that Coterra is “bound” by the plea agreement, “which includes water treatment systems and/or bottled water delivery until the water line is up and running.” A spokesperson also noted that the Attorney General’s Office had no role in the drafting of the consent order, or in its timing on the date of the plea hearing.

“Our office plays no role in DEP’s regulatory decisions,” Jacklin Rhoads, communications director at the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, said by email. “The only agreement announced last month that our office played a part in was convicting Coterra and securing resources to finally build a public water supply in Dimock.”

The plea hearing was celebrated as an environmental victory of sorts for the state’s new governor, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who takes office in January. Shapiro’s office charged Cabot Oil and Gas with 15 counts of environmental crimes in June 2020. After several years with no resolution and no formal court hearing scheduled, residents told Capital & Main they felt left behind, as the attorney general appeared to turn his focus to winning his election. Several residents, including Kemble, said they hoped for a water line that would pipe clean water to their homes — they had spent years getting creative with finding water supplies. Kemble, for instance, has for years trucked miles away from his home weekly to refill two 500-gallon tanks that sit in his basement and feed his faucets.

A matter of days after his election, Shapiro’s office informed residents that a plea hearing would be scheduled and a water line was in sight. After the hearing, Shapiro held a news conference applauding his office’s work in pursuing justice for Dimock families. What was not announced was a change of terms to the moratorium that had been reached the same day — in fact, when asked about Coterra’s future prospects in the area at the press conference, Shapiro deferred to the DEP.

“When you’re governor, will Coterra be allowed to resume drilling and operations in the nine-square-mile box?” one reporter asked at the news conference.

“That’s obviously a question for the regulators, not for the Attorney General’s Office,” Shapiro said. “Certainly it’s an issue that we will review upon taking office.”

Days after that, residents quietly learned that the terms governing Coterra’s fracking in their area had changed.

Victoria Switzer, a 19-year resident of Dimock who spoke at Shapiro’s news conference on the Nov. 29 hearing, told Capital and Main she feels “duped.” Switzer says she asked a representative from the AG’s office at an earlier meeting directly about the possibility of a trade – water line for protected drilling rights – and was told that the matter was under the purview of the DEP.

“I’m just reeling from the decision,” Switzer said. “I just feel like I’m in a worse situation than I was before I met the AG.”

(An extended version of this article is available here.)

This article was produced by the nonprofit journalism publication Capital & Main. It is co-published here with permission.

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