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Amy Salansky says she had a water problem before Encana company started work.
LAKE TWP. – Township Supervisor Amy Salansky said reports in the community that her water well was contaminated by natural gas drilling on her property is false.
Salansky on Nov. 7 posted a message on the Facebook social network webpage of Brian Oram, lab director for Wilkes University’s Center for Environmental Quality, about her water well.
“Brian, I sent permission for you guys to look at my home water test. I need something for my house for the salt and methane. My water smells terrible and is terrible tasting, very salty. Which one of these systems would you recommend?” the post states.
Methane migration into water sources is a possible result of improper drilling activities, and flowback water from the hydraulic fracturing process used to stimulate the release of gas from the shale beneath the earth is heavy in salt, but both problems can also be naturally occurring. Salansky said the latter is the case with her water well.
“I’ve had this problem prior to the well drilling. I haven’t been able to drink my water for a long, long time, for years,” she said.
Salansky said she had her well tested at about the same as everyone else in the area, prior to Encana Oil & Gas beginning its drilling activities in June, and those tests confirmed methane was present in her well.
Salansky also said she is “thrilled” that Encana Oil & Gas is leaving Luzerne County, having discovered that the exploratory wells the company drilled on her property and a property in Fairmount Township were unlikely to produce natural gas in commercial quantities. “I get my life back and my land back. … I’m sure you’ve read all the blogs and the way people treated me. They treated me unfairly. I wasn’t getting any royalties out of this. I lost 6 acres of my ground,” Salansky said.
Neither she nor her husband, Paul, own the gas rights to the land. The couple bought the land after the owner died so they could farm it, but the owner had willed the mineral and gas rights to his nephew, who retained them in the sale.
Salansky said Encana was “excellent” to work with and treated her with respect. “I just hope people understand that even as a township official, I had no say in the gas drilling, and I received no rights or royalties,” she said.
But she said she was compensated for the land disturbance on her property.