Cabot Oil & Gas Reacts to Criminal Charges in Dimock Pollution Case

Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation, which was slapped with criminal charges June 15 in connection with contamination of residential water supplies in a Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania community says the company is not like its being portrayed in court documents.

Cabot was charged on fifteen counts including illegal discharge of industrial waste in a grand jury ruling concerning claims of contamination of the water in Dimock.

The Associated Press reports the gas driller is pushing back against a grand jury’s claim that it acted with “long-term indifference” toward Dimock, where high levels of methane leaked into residential groundwater supplies.

Earlier this week the Houston-based company was charged with breaking Pennsylvania environmental laws. A grand jury investigation found the driller failed to fix faulty gas wells that are leaking methane into aquifers in Dimock and surrounding communities.

In a written statement, Cabot says its “history and involvement in the community shows a very different reality than what was painted” by the grand jury. The company faces a preliminary hearing next month on 15 charges. It has not yet entered a plea.

The long battle over fracking for natural gas in the rural Susquehanna community has been going on for over ten years, has seen law suits, the gas company threatening to have a resident/activist thrown in jail and the making of the 2010 Josh Fox anti-fracking documentary: “Gasland”, countered by the pro-drilling film: “FrackNation.”