Finally some good news on Pavillion by Star-Tribune, May 27, 2014
Poor Pavillion hasn’t had a lot of good news involving water in recent years.
But recently, quietly, some good news–in the form of water–trucked its way east from Pavillion’s municipal system to nearby residents’ newly built cisterns. The cisterns and the get-it-fixed Wyoming attitude behind them is worth celebrating.
The town — or more accurately, a small group of residents with bad well water within a natural gas field to the east — was an early poster child and rallying cry for foes of fracking. A federal attempt to study the situation was aborted and handed to the state, which is now studying the situation in league with Encana Corp., the field’s operator.
But the residents still have bad water. And others near them, with perfectly fine water, have found their land and property values stained by the international attention that made the name Pavillion synonymous with a fracking-damaged environment.
The state, specifically the governor’s office, put together a plan to provide cisterns for those who wanted them and truck up to 480,000 gallons of water to each cistern per year from Pavillion’s perfectly fine municipal water. [What frac chemicals were injected by Encana and which ones of those have been tested in the “prefectly fine” municipal water supply?]
Recently, those the trucks rolled with the first loads of water. The cistern program is a solid, level-headed solution for the real problems faced by Wyoming landowners, and we’re glad to see it begun.
The governor’s office and the state Legislature deserve credit for doing something about the basic problem of bad water in the area, regardless of the ongoing questions about how it was contaminated. With the help of a Legislature-approved $750,000, 35 landowners now have good water they can use for themselves, their family, their herds and crops.
The situation isn’t yet resolved, of course. Pavillion won’t soon rid itself of its bad water reputation, and there’s no word yet when we’ll have any better idea of what happened in the area.
In terms of numbers, the cistern program isn’t a big thing, really. It’s not flashy. But for those who now have good water, it’s a critical reminder that every resident of Wyoming matters to the rest of us. The cisterns are a solution and a rare piece of good news in the messy situation that is Pavillion.
We’re glad to see it in place. [Emphasis added]
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