The Seneca Resources Company, LLC reported to DEP that at 4:00 p.m. on July 3, 2022 a plastic pipeline ruptured and spilled an estimated 18,000   gallons of shale gas drilling wastewater in Shippen Township, Cameron County.

On the morning of July 4th, about a mile away and downhill from the spill, John and Paige Rosenberger knew nothing about the spill, all they knew was their well pump wasn’t working.

John is a retired State Trooper who was on the force for 25 years.  He hunted in Cameron County with his father when he was young and really liked the area.

He and his wife Paige bought their home and 46 acres and moved in after he retired in May of 2018 and became part of the community.  

John serves as president of the local Rotary Club.

“We knew this was our forever home, the home and property you work your entire life for and we truly loved living here,” John said.

July 5

On July 5, they called their plumber in Emporium and he came and pulled the pump out of the 220 foot deep well; he said it had bad wiring.  By 4:30 that evening they had a new pump and wiring installed.

John let the water run from an outside hose so the water would clear.

“I don’t know why to this day, but as a kid, I used to drink out of a hose and I put it up to my mouth and the taste of salt entered my brain, but I didn’t think about it at that time,” said John.

“Now, my wife and I had not showered for two days over July 4th, she hopped in one shower, I hopped in another. We tried to take showers. The soap would not lather up. I just couldn’t get lathered. It felt sticky,” explained John.

“So then I went downstairs and I actually took a glass of water because we do drink our well water, and it was the saltiest water I’ve ever tasted,” John said, and he immediately spit it out.  [Click Here for a video of the water.]

“I’ve been to the beach many, many, many times and got salt water in my mouth. I would compare it to that except saltier, and couldn’t understand it.” said John.   

Since it was 8:00 in the evening it was too late to call anyone, so John had to wait until morning.

He was not aware that while he was dealing with his well pump, an inspector for the Department of Environmental Protection arrived at the site of the pipeline spill at 8:15 a.m. on July 5, in response to the July 3 notification by Seneca Resources of the spill.  [DEP inspection report.]

The inspector stayed on site until 1:30 confirming the spill, taking water samples and doing conductivity measurements to confirm it was wastewater and inspected the ruptured 16-inch plastic wastewater pipeline Seneca had already replaced so they could keep operating.

The inspector also looked at the impact of the spill– the “saturated” soils, “stressed” vegetation (trees had already started to turn brown), followed the spill down to a nearby stream, which the inspector noted “goes subsurface multiple times” before reaching a road, and identified a dozen dead salamanders.  Photos were taken and included in the report.

No notice of violations for the spill were included in the July 5, 2022 inspection report [which normally happens in the case of spills], and there was no request to Seneca Resources to do anything [which was also unusual compared to other oil and gas spills].

There was also no mention of investigating to see if any water supplies were impacted by the spill.

The last note in the report was– “This case has been referred to the Department’s Environmental Cleanups and Brownfield Program.”

In a follow-up inspection on July 29, 2022, DEP said the wastewater pipeline that ruptured was “decommissioned,” but in inspection reports on August 18, 2022 and October 20, 2022 they said it was back in operation.  

No more information about the 18,000 gallon spill was included in these reports.

July 6 – Everybody Showed Up

The next morning, at Paige’s suggestion, they called Penn State’s Agricultural Analytical Services Laboratory and the first thing the person at the Lab asked was– “Is there any fracking in the area?”  

Yes.  “Bingo, we think that’s your problem,” Penn State said.

John then called the Seneca Resources/Highland Field Services office in Kane, McKean County, and within 10 minutes an “executive with Seneca Resources/Highland” called him back.

“He asked me to explain the situation and my address. I did… everything. And his quote was, “This is 100% our fault. We had a fracking wastewater spill on Sunday, July 3rd at 4:00 p.m. where a pipe ruptured and the fracking wastewater spewed into the air, into the forest and ran down the hillside.”

John said he explained the wastewater “disappeared in a hollow, and that the DEP had been notified and that they would notify the DEP on our behalf that we were now reporting a problem.”

“When the [Seneca/Highland] executive came down [to our house] the first day, he told me it [the spill] was approximately 18,000 gallons. He didn’t list it in barrels. He actually listed gallons,” said John.

“At a later point in time, he said it was 16,000 gallons, several weeks later. Several months later, I was told 12,000 gallons. It seems like it kept going down every time we talked about how many gallons were there,” explained John. 

“I believe, if I remember correctly, I received or made 43 phone calls that day,” said John.  “That same [Seneca Resources] executive showed up [at our house] with that section of pipe that ruptured in the back of his truck. So we of course took pictures of that. 

“And representatives from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection were there. Moody and Associates [a consultant for Seneca Resources] also showed up about 6:00 that evening. Everyone wanted to take water samples.”

John said Seneca Resources advised them not to drink their water and the next day they arranged to have a 2,500 gallon water tank brought in to provide them with temporary water, as required by state law.

“We also called the DEP Williamsport office to report it to make sure that we had reported the problem,” said John.

“We moved to Emporium for peace and quiet in 2018, and since that day [July 6, 2022], we have had absolutely no peace and absolutely no quiet,” said John.

First DEP Notice Of Violation

On July 8, 2022, DEP’s Environmental Cleanup Program issued the first of two notices of violation related to the wastewater pipeline rupture and spill.

“An inspection by DEP on July 6, 2022, revealed that pollution or a danger of pollution of the waters of the Commonwealth exists at the site. 

“As a result of a leak in a pipeline conducting production water related to Utica shale gas extraction, the soils and waters of the Commonwealth were contaminated. This contamination constitutes a creation of a danger of pollution and pollution as defined in the Clean Streams Law (CSL).”

“The inspection conducted on July 6, 2022 revealed impacts to soil, and surface water that extend for approximately 1 mile downstream from the release point. 

“Additionally, groundwater impacts were discovered at a nearby residence indicating contamination has migrated to the subsurface to an unknown degree.

“As the landowner or responsible party, you have the responsibility under Section 316 to correct any polluting condition at the Site, consistent with the Land Recycling and Environmental Remediation Standards Act (Act 2) and in a manner which is satisfactory to the DEP.

“You have responsibility under Section 601 of the CSL and Section 1917-A of the Administrative Code to abate any public nuisance at the site, consistent with the Land Recycling and Environmental Remediation Standards Act (Act 2) and in a manner which is satisfactory to the DEP.”

DEP said it anticipated receiving information identifying soil and groundwater pollution from the spill and a plan for future action by September 1, 2022.

Water Sample Results

The first well water sample results taken by Moody and Associates for Seneca Resources on July 6, 2022 showed chlorides at 8,490 mg/L, barium at 94.6 mg/L, aluminum at .213 mg/L, manganese at .698 mg/L and Total Dissolved Solids at 16,600 mg/L, according to the Rosenbergers.

Pre-spill water well sample results from home sampling tests done for the Rosenbergers by Penn State University’s Agricultural Analytical Services Laboratory in 2020 and 2021 found chloride at less than 1 mg/L, aluminum at .04 mg/L, barium at .017 mg/L and Total Dissolved Solids at less than 20 mg/L.

On July 22, 2022, at the Rosenberger’s request, Moody did a specific test of the well water for radioactivity that found Radium 226 at 222 pCi/L [44 times the drinking water standard of 5] and thorium at 8,175.5 pCi/L [545 times the drinking water standard of 15].  [Read sample results]

Dr. William Burgos, a Penn State Professor who has done extensive research on oil and gas wastewater, said after reviewing the results– “I would be concerned about the Rosenberger’s drinking that water because the measured thorium concentration is off the charts.”

He did note a caveat that the relative standard deviation of the measurements is high indicating the lab may have “uncertainty” about the results.

Temporary Water Supply

There was no doubt the Rosenbergers had a severely contaminated well they could not use and have been relying ever since on Seneca Resources refilling their 2,500 gallon temporary water tank so they could have water to live in their home.

Because Seneca did not initially weatherize the tank against winter temperatures, on Christmas Eve 2022 everything completely froze in the system and they had no water, John said.

He had to use his own heaters to thaw it out.

Although the water is required to meet drinking water standards, John said he saw algae floating in the water and has had to change the sediment filters on his system every two weeks to ensure the water he’s using is “clean”.

Pumping 300,000 Gallons Of Water

John said the first thing Seneca Resources did to try to fix their well was to flush it out.

“Moody’s set up a system to start pumping our well,” said John. “We felt a moral obligation to do that. It was explained to us that maybe this can help flush out the system, maybe it [shale gas wastewater] won’t continue down, but obviously it went somewhere in my opinion. 

“So we did allow that. I believe starting July 16th to November 2nd, we had Moody’s representatives there pretty much every day… sometimes 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with some weekends off,” said John. 

He said three big tanks were parked in their quarter-mile long driveway to fill with the wastewater and other trucks would come in one or two times a day to haul it away because they couldn’t just dump it on the ground.  [Click Here for a video.]

 “I would say at least 200,000 to 300,000 gallons of water came out of that [original] well,” John said. “We had an outstanding well, it never ran dry. It kept pumping.”

“So have they [sample results] come down substantially? Absolutely,” said John.  “With the numbers that we had from our water testing from 2020 and 2021, have they ever gotten to those numbers? No. 

“We’re two years into it, they have never gotten to the numbers we had before. And again, like everything else at our house, we’ve always said, you got to get us back to what we had before their spill. Moody’s sampling results continue to show the contaminant numbers coming out of our well fluctuate on a monthly basis due to the aquifer being polluted,” said John.

A New Well – Not

“The Executive at Seneca/Highland offered to drill us a new water well, 850 feet from our home on our property, at the end of August of 2022.  I said that would be fine but you must find us good drinking water like we had before your spill,” requested John.

“When the results of the new well testing came back, an Executive at Moody and Associates stated: “the numbers are mirroring the numbers from your current well,”  said John.

“I informed the Seneca/Highland Executive, in person, on September 19, 2022, after receiving these test results that we were done and the aquifer is obviously destroyed for the foreseeable future. 

“I gave him the option of negotiating directly with us to ‘buy-out’ our home and property, a decision that devastated my wife and I, or the only other option would be to file a civil lawsuit against his companies.  

“They provided us with a ridiculous offer for our home and property, and said take it or go hire an attorney,” said John.  “We were forced at that point to hire an attorney.”

Official DEP Water Pollution Determination 

On January 9, 2023– six months after the Seneca spill–  DEP issued three official determinations that three water supply wells were “adversely affected by oil and gas operations” in Shippen Township, Cameron County, without identifying the source of the spill.

DEP redacted the names of the well owners in Shippen Township, but the ShippenTwp1 letter was confirmed to be the Rosenbergers.

The letter included water well sample results showing chloride at 10,777 mg/L [standard 250], barium at 95 mg/L [standard 2 mh/L], manganese at 6.12 mg/L [standard .05 mg/L] and Total Dissolved Solids at 23,360 mg/L [standard 500 mg/L].

DEP’s ShippenTwp2 letter and ShippenTwp3 letter had lower results, but they were still above drinking water standards.

[Click Here for a list of all 408 water supplies determined by DEP to be adversely affected by oil and gas operations– without the names– since 2008.]

DEP Request For Temporary Water

On February 2, 2023, the DEP Environmental Cleanup Program issued a second notice of violation to Seneca Resources Company for polluting three private water supplies as a result of their “oil and gas activities.”

DEP said, “​​We request that you provide temporary water within 24 hours of this Notice to the location of the Water Supplies set forth in Exhibit A [names redacted].”

“If temporary water is already being provided, we request that you continue providing that supply until otherwise approved by the Department.”

“The Department’s investigation revealed that Seneca has caused or allowed the unpermitted discharge of chlorides, total dissolved solids, barium, and manganese, common constituents of production fluids, into the groundwater, a water of the Commonwealth in Shippen Township, Cameron County.”

The notice further requested Seneca to submit a restoration plan for the water supplies impacted within 30 days of the violation notice..

John said DEP’s Environmental Cleanup Program did regular testing of their well and if that testing showed results were under drinking water standards, and returned to their pre-spill testing results for eight consecutive quarters, they would deem the well clear.

They never reached that goal.

In March 2024, DEP presented a water restoration plan to the Rosenbergers for their original well.

“[DEP said] here’s Seneca’s plan for your water, the water restoration plan for your home using your original well. They’re just completely discounting the new well,” John said.

The restoration plan included doing a 72-hour purge of their original well and then test it for a month and then install “all these systems, including reverse osmosis, a water softener system and ozone filter” to keep the water clean, said John.

“We have a UV light, we have a sediment filter, we want it back to what we had with that. I don’t want all this other stuff on there. I don’t want to deal with that,” John told DEP.

So, the water restoration plan issue remains unresolved.

Civil Lawsuit For Punitive Damages

“A civil suit has been initiated by us against Seneca Resources and Highland Field Services [in April 2023 in Cameron County Common Pleas Court],” said John.  “They have fought us on everything concerning the civil suit and have even questioned our honesty and integrity, discounting our water analysis tests prior to their spill because I collected the samples instead of a third party.”

At a hearing on July 3 that was attended by over 40 county residents, both sides gave a status report on discovery motions and responses.

Paige said the goal of the lawsuit is both compensatory and punitive.

“DEP’s not going to fine them a lot, maybe a lawsuit will compel them to make changes. If they have to pay on a lawsuit, they’ll think twice whether they drag pipes around and do things they’re not supposed to do,” said Paige.  “Maybe that’ll make them think. That’s the only thing we have to force their hand.  We are fighting for the residents of Cameron County and all victims, including potential victims of these spills.  It was us this time but the next time it will be the Smith’s or the Jones’s or whoever.  If something we are doing changes the way Seneca Resources conducts business then we will have succeeded.”

The only enforcement action DEP has taken with Seneca Resources has been to issue the two notices of violation.

Megan Lehman, Communications Manager for DEP’s Northcentral Regional Office, said, “DEP has been diligently working with Seneca and the impacted parties since this incident occurred with the goal of achieving long-term compliance, including any necessary mitigation efforts, remedial action, and restoration of the impacted water supplies. 

“To date, Seneca has entered the Act 2 land recycling process to remediate soil impacts.  DEP received Seneca’s Act 2 final report for soil impacts and approved it on January 2, 2024. 

“Seneca is continuing to assess other environmental conditions through collection of groundwater samples from monitoring wells, aquifer testing of water supplies, ongoing surface water sampling, and aquatic assessments of stream health.  

“DEP continues its oversight of this case to ensure full compliance and is committed to working with Seneca to complete the Act 2 process for groundwater as expeditiously as possible.”

“DEP is committed to protecting every Pennsylvanian’s constitutional right to clean air and pure water. That’s why DEP sent out inspectors to this site, worked with the homeowner to regularly test their water, and is holding the responsible party accountable.”

Bottomline

In answer to a question about why not move somewhere else, John said–

“Where’s the nearest well pads? They weren’t there even six years ago. Right now, there are 54 active unconventional wells within three miles of our house that were not there six years ago.

“So again, I guess you say who owns the land around you?  But even if it’s state game lands [which has shale gas drilling].  I guess there’s a [State Forest] moratorium now, but who’s to say in the future?”

“We gave them [Seneca] an opportunity, even if they wanted to keep things quiet. Let’s face it, two months into it, if they would’ve offered us a certain amount of money and they said, “This is an unfortunate accident. We’re sorry,” we may have taken it and gone. 

“I’m not here to say we wouldn’t. I don’t know. But, by them not even negotiating in good faith at all, has led us to this point.”

“It is absolutely ridiculous what we have endured up to this point and what we continue to endure on a daily basis,” said John.  “One day you can be sitting in your home and through no fault of your own a company poisons your well water.  

“Your only recourse is to sue a multi-million-dollar company as a retired couple in their 50’s. 

“I spent a career fighting for other people and for what is right.  We will fight for as long as necessary to make sure this does not happen to others who do not have the time, money, stamina or health to fight. 

“Seneca Resources has a pattern of fracking wastewater spills since at least 2017.  These spills are documented by the PADEP.  

“We are literally prisoners in our own home as we cannot sell our property and we cannot obtain any home equity loans against our property.  

“We have been tight-lipped up to this point.  You will not find any social media posts, newspaper articles or anything else about our situation.  We feel the time is now to change that,” said John.

Click Here to see photos and videos from the spill, and Rosenberger home.

State Agencies Lack Authority

 This is another example showing state agencies do not have the statutory authority to ensure shale gas-related pipelines for gas, wastewater and freshwater are built and operated in a way that is safe and protects public health and the environment.

There are tens of thousands of miles of these pipelines crisscrossing the countryside with little thought given to their impacts, in many cases because they are described as “temporary.”

For example, a natural gas gathering pipeline slid down a hill in Westmoreland County and punched through the basement of a family’s home and no state agency had any jurisdiction to do anything about it.  Read more here.

In the case of the Rosenbergers, no one notified local officials, the local water authority or individual property owners with wells a major gas drilling wastewater spill had occurred that could threaten them.  They were in the dark.

No one investigated whether any water supplies were impacted, and like the “canary in a coal mine” from another age, it wasn’t until the Rosenbergers drank the water and spit it out they knew they had a problem.

The owners of gas and hazardous liquid pipelines are the most penalized industry in the state when it comes to environmental violations– over $71 million in the last decade alone.

It is time for the General Assembly to at last come to grips with these issues and do something.