Years of conflict may still lie ahead for an already epic legal clash over water contamination in the Marcellus Shale town of Dimock, Pa. A federal court Friday scrapped a verdict against Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. and ordered a new trial, ruling that evidence in the case simply did not support the jury’s $4.2 million finding last year in favor of two Dimock families that complained of fouled drinking water.
Chief Magistrate Judge Martin Carlson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania wrote that weaknesses in the plaintiffs’ arguments and "regrettable missteps" by their attorney undermined the verdict (E&E News PM, March 31).
"It’s an open-and-shut case as far as oil and gas contamination goes.
Industry supporters were elated, seeing Friday’s decision as vindication after last year’s $4.2 million hit to Cabot’s reputation.
The standards vary slightly by jurisdiction, but federal judges generally can set aside jury verdicts and order a new trial in any of these circumstances: Newly discovered evidence arises that could change the likely outcome.
"Nevertheless, upon consideration of the trial record, and following reflection on the substantial and varied weaknesses in the plaintiffs’ case together with the myriad examples of inappropriate conduct that repeatedly occurred in the jury’s presence and may have colored the outcome of this case," he said, "the Court is constrained to find that a new trial is not only justified, but required."
In November 2009, 44 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against Cabot arguing that the company’s new natural gas wells were to blame for tainted water wells in the area.
The case narrowed further as the early 2016 trial approached, with Carlson tossing several claims against Cabot and barring the plaintiffs from presenting certain evidence that had not previously been produced during the many years of litigation.
If the settlement discussions fail, the parties will move on to a new trial at the district court.
The judge noted that some testimony from plaintiffs’ witnesses could persuade a reasonable jury that even though the families complained of water problems before Cabot started drilling, the company could have contributed to issues in the area.

Water Contamination Concerns Being Tested At BurlCo Military Base.
(WRIGHTSTOWN, NJ) — There’s a concern over chemical contamination of water supplies in and around Joint McGuire/Dix/Lakehurst.
Military officials say they’re on top of the situation.
The concerns mirror those that have surfaced at several military facilities across the country, including former installations in the Philadelphia suburbs, where foam used to battle fires over the years contained two cancer causing chemicals.
“We have seen elevated levels of PFOA and PFOS on surface water samples, soil samples and groundwater samples” Colonel Gregory McClure told KYW Newsradio, “but we haven’t seen that move into drinking water sources on the base.” They want to sample some 275 shallow private wells off the base that could have a problem.
So far, only 3 have shown traces above safe standards, and homeowners are getting filters and bottled water.
But less than half of those asked have agreed to those tests, and there are many homes and businesses particularly in Manchester and Jackson Townships that need to be checked.
Still most people get their water from municipal sources, and not wells.
They are in the clear.
More information on the Air Force’s response to the situation at the base can be found on line at http://www.jointbasemdl.af.mil/PFCs .

Elwood tenants win compensation from landlord after floods cause ‘black water’ contamination.
A couple who lived in a house in Elwood with their children was awarded just over $6000 after they took their fight to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
Rebecca and Graham Matthews claimed their home and belongings were contaminated by “black water” after a major storm on December 28 last year.
Flooding damaged the walls, ceilings and carpets as well as the tenants’ clothing and posed a threat to health.
VCAT deputy president Ian Lulham found that warning put the landlord on notice about the house’s potential for storm damage, and that the landlord breached her duty under the Residential Tenancies Act to ensure premises were maintained in good repair.
A week after the storm, water was still coming from light fittings in the living room and bedroom.
The tenants moved out after suffering headaches, skin rashes and nausea, but continued to pay rent as a sign of good faith.
The City of Port Phillip issued a building order, saying the “stormwater discharge system to the existing dwelling is dilapidated, allowing water ingress to the inner parts of the dwelling, posing a danger to the occupants”.
Mr Lulham found the landlord had breached an obligation to identify and rectify defects, ordering rent from December 29 to January 27 be paid to the tenants.
Also covered in the $6,023.52 payout: the cost of reports, insurance excess, unplanned moving, and an out of home fee of $100 per day.

Water contamination continues in Flint, Michigan and San Diego.
Officials recently reported that the drinking water in Flint, Michigan is now finally in compliance with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulations in terms of foreign material in the water, such as lead and copper.
"In addition to replacing the old pipes, where a lot of the lead came out of, they have to watch the acidity and pH of the water because they switched water supplies.
It’s a combination of more vigilant monitoring plus replacing old, old infrastructure."
"It’s all about enforcing the monitoring," Dorsey said.
"And making sure you have enough people looking at the monitoring reports to pick up a problem.
The EPA has to be vigilant to make sure no problems are occurring.
According to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, 90 percent of the samples collected were well below the level of lead needed to declare a federal action.
"We will continue to work with our local, county and federal partners to maintain this trend.” Three schools in the San Ysidro school district also raised concerns about the levels of lead, copper and bacteria in public school water fountains after reports of blue-green water from pressure tests for plumbing leaks came from La Mirada.
"All households get a report from these districts and complying with strict EPA standards and the state.

Water on, off N.J. military base contaminated with chemicals, base says.
Tests on several water sources on and off Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst show contamination from two chemicals contained in firefighting foam used on the base for decades, the base said.
The testing is ongoing and being completed as part of a comprehensive environmental effort by the U.S. Air Force to ferret out contamination after prior tests in ground and surface waters on base found elevated levels of PFOS and PFOA, the base said.
Dustin Roberts said.
Of 131 off-base private drinking water wells tested, three were contaminated, and one had combined PFOS/PFOA levels of 1,392 parts per trillion, Roberts said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s health advisory level – or HAL – for PFOS and PFOA is 70 parts per trillion.
On base, the program has tested approximately 165 groundwater monitoring wells and 28 drinking water sources – 27 of them wells and one surface intake that is off- base.
Of those, 124 of the monitoring wells were contaminated and two base drinking water sources, two shallow wells on the Lakehurst part of the base, were contaminated, Roberts said.
Such systems were commonly installed in aircraft hangars, he said.
Roberts said the Air Force at the base is concerned with the contamination overall, but is focusing on impacts off base.

Water contaminated on, near Joint Base — chemicals thousands of times higher than fed standards.
LAKEHURST — Foam used by the military at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst has contaminated several water sources on and off the base, according to a report.
The Air Force has been testing for perfluoroctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), an unregulated chemical used to make a firefighting foam to extinguish petroleum fires.
The foam is the source of the contamination at the base, which like other bases across the country over several decades, has dumped thousands upon thousands of gallons of the toxins into the ground.
According to NJ.com, results from wells on the base show thousands of times higher than the federal government’s health advisory level for drinking water, while three of 131 private, off-base wells tested for high levels.
Tests of water sources used by the surrounding communities of Jackson, Manchester and Pemberton came back with negative results, according to the report.
The chemicals are also used to make Teflon, Scotchgard, food wrappers and textiles.
The Joint Base will provide complete results to New Jersey 101.5 on Wednesday.
Contact reporter Dan Alexander at Dan.Alexander@townsquaremedia.com.
More from New Jersey 101.5

Nanotechnology could have a big future as a tool for upstream oil and gas and other industries to use to clean up contaminated water, Professor Michael S. Wong of Rice University, Houston, told the SPE Gulf Coast Section’s R&D Study Group recently.
In addition, Wong said, “An exciting new role for catalysis is in the treatment of produced water for reuse.” Introducing a catalyst into a chemical process can bring about or speed up a chemical reaction, with the catalyst remaining unconsumed in the reaction and thus able to act repeatedly.
Only tiny amounts of catalyst are needed to achieve these effects.
Wong stressed the advantage of catalytic conversion techniques over the established methods of activated carbon adsorption and air stripping that are used to remove many contaminants from water.
Treating TCE-Laced Water He posed the example of treating water contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) by traditional methods vs. a catalytic technology that his research group has developed.
Activated carbon treatment can remove it from water, but when the carbon becomes saturated with TCE, the carbon must be disposed of or cleaned by burning off the contaminant.
While one problem has been solved, “you now have another contaminated stream to deal with,” Wong said.
By adjustments in the amount of palladium, the surface coverage of the catalyst can be altered as needed.
The catalyst has performed very well in the laboratory, he said, and his group is working to bring the technology into field applications.
NEWT Partnership He also discussed work by the Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT), a collaborative initiative between universities, industrial companies, and other organizations.

The Acadian Group of the Sierra Club and the WaterMark Alliance have sent a letter to Lafayette Consolidated Government leaders that recommends actions that they say should be taken to remedy the recently discovered contamination of the Chicot Aquifer near the Lafayette North Water Treatment Plant. The letter was sent to Mayor-President Joel Robideaux, LUS Director Terry Huval, LUS Water and Wastewater Operations Manager Craig Gautreaux and all nine Lafayette City-Parish Council members, according to a press release issued jointly by the organizations. The letter, which is dated March 22, lists 10 recommendations that the organizations want to see their local leaders pursue, including: Plan and execute a study of surface contamination within the wellhead protection area of local wells. Include sampling for all contaminants that have been monitored in LUS well water, and for contaminants found at other US rail sites, which are either undergoing or have been remediated. Where appropriate, partner with other state and federal agencies. Intensify sampling of well water by increasing the frequency of sampling and adding contaminants for analysis to include all known or suspected contaminants present on the surface or in the surficial aquifer (groundwater just below the surface). Make all past and current well monitoring and sampling data easily available for…

Council contacted the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) on the same day but Lynch said they failed to attend.
* Droves of dying koura float down stream * Freshwater stream’s dying crayfish An overseas scientist, made aware by media interest, pointed out to the ministry the deaths could be a result of crayfish plague – a disease not found in New Zealand that would have triggered a quarantine and forced the alert of trade partners, Lynch said.
"There was a tug-of-war over a couple of days between me and MPI because we only had these three koura," Lynch said.
Lynch said although the number of koura collected by regional council staff was small, it satisfied its level of investigation.
MPI investigators had no koura samples to test and were "completely reliant" on council’s work.
But the increased risk of crayfish plague forced council to hand over it’s three samples.
The MPI dissection of tiny animals, at an animal health laboratory in Wellington, found no trace of crayfish plague and left very little else to be tested – less than one gram of koura remained.
The minimum sample for council’s analysis was 20 grams.
Further examination of the stream gave it the all clear.
"We’re surmising that there has been a single strike incident in a tributary upstream and a colony of koura that have been impacted."

HEMPFIELD TOWNSHIP, Pa. — The water supply for an entire community is contaminated after police say vandals dumped chemicals into the water supply of a private mobile home park.
"It was just black," said Jessica Anderson, who lives in Pine View Manor in Hempfield Township, Westmoreland County.
Anderson woke up her fiance, William Greenawalt, who is also the park manager.
"The door was busted," said Greenawalt.
Greenawalt says this is the second time this has happened in two weeks and that the 33 trailers in the park were already under a boil water advisory.
A water buffalo from Westmoreland County Public Safety remained at the entrance to the park Monday.
Pine View Manor is working on the long term solution since putting up a warning sign didn’t work.
A surveillance camera near the water supply was inoperable at the time of the vandalism anyway, and police said the person who contaminated the water further damaged the camera.
Officials say the contamination only affects Pine View Manor and not surrounding communities.
Trooper Stephen Limani said that the person responsible for the contamination could face an attempted homicide charge for each park resident if test results show a potentially lethal chemical was put in the water.