Thursday, Jan 20 2011 1:55PM
Drilling for natural gas may contaminate water supplies with disease-causing toxins.
Residents of Mora County, New Mexico, have completed a baseline water quality study that will allow the community to track any drinking water contamination that may result from natural gas drilling and production, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Members of Drilling Mora County, a group of local residents opposed to drilling, completed the project so that corporations interested in the rural area could be held accountable for any pollution created during the project.
"We now have a defensible set of documents so that, if the industry was ever allowed to drill in the Las Vegas basin in Mora County, they would have to defend against their chemicals showing up in our water, because our water is testing clean from all hydraulic fracturing fluids," Kathleen Duley, one of the founders of the organization, told the newspaper.
The process of extracting natural gas through drilling, known as fracking, has been proven to contaminate water system services causing issues for many rural residents nationwide. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency discovered that water wells in Pavillion, Wyoming, were polluted with traces of methane and benzene from drilling, a public health hazard that the government agency said could lead to illnesses such as kidney failure and cancer.