In notorious case of water pollution, big oil-and-gas firm will build water system and pay residents' bills for 75 years

What may be America's most notorious case of drinking-water pollution from oil and gas operations ended Tuesday, as "Pennsylvania’s most active gas driller pleaded no contest" charges of "polluting a rural community’s drinking water 14 years ago" and trying to evade responsibility, reports Michael Rubinkam of The Associated Press.

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"Residents of the tiny crossroads of Dimock in northeastern Pennsylvania say they have gone more than a decade without a clean, reliable source of drinking water after their aquifer was ruined by Houston-based Coterra Energy Inc.," AP reports. "Coterra agreed to pay $16.29 million to fund construction of a new public water system and pay the impacted residents’ water bills for the next 75 years."

The plea was "the result of years of negotiations between Coterra and the attorney general’s office"  of the state, AP notes, and "represents a milestone in one of the most prominent pollution cases ever to emerge from the U.S. drilling and fracking boom. Dimock drew national notoriety after residents were filmed lighting their tap water on fire in the Emmy Award-winning 2010 documentary 'Gasland'. Coterra’s corporate predecessor, Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., was charged in June 2020 with 15 criminal counts, most of them felonies, after a grand jury investigation found the company drilled faulty gas wells that leaked flammable methane into residential water supplies in Dimock and surrounding communities. . . . Coterra pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of prohibition against discharge of industrial wastes under the state’s Clean Streams Law. The plea means Coterra does not admit guilt but agreed to accept criminal responsibility."

Residents have shunned their well water since "and even water drawn from creeks and artesian wells instead," AP reports. "Resident Scott Ely said some of his neighbors had moved away or developed health problems as a result of Coterra’s practices, while his own children, now in college, had grown up 'without a safe water source. . . . There’s so much heartache."