Pavillion citizens with contaminated groundwater file state records request for draft investigation reports, object that Encana can review them and make comments, but harmed citizens and the public can’t

Locals object to plan for Pavillion water reports by Mead Gruver, Associated Press, July 11, 2014, SFGate.com
People dealing with polluted groundwater in the Pavillion area have objected that a gas developer can review and comment on two state investigations involving the contamination before the public is allowed to see the reports. Representatives of Pavillion Area Concerned Citizens filed a state records request Thursday seeking the draft reports. They say Wyoming law doesn’t provide for Pavillion gas field owner Encana to review the reports before the general public.

“We believe that the state is obligated by law to release any reports or documents to the public and the Pavillion Area Working Group at the same time they are released to Encana and the EPA,” John Fenton and Jeff Locker of the citizens group wrote to Gov. Matt Mead.

The Pavillion Area Working Group — comprised of state and federal officials and local residents — has been monitoring federal and state efforts to determine what caused the well water of some homeowners to turn foul and smell like petrochemicals around the time gas drilling picked up in the area eight years ago.

In December, 2011, a draft report released by the EPA found that hydraulic fracturing may have played a role in groundwater contamination in the Pavillion area. … State and Encana officials were deeply skeptical, however. To this day, the EPA has not finalized its report or submitted it for peer review. The federal agency handed off its Pavillion investigation to Wyoming officials last summer.

Both upcoming reports will detail recent investigations by the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission into the cause of the problem. The reports could go to Encana and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for review within weeks.

One report that was recently completed and sent to an independent expert for review examines the structural integrity of gas wells. A second report nearing completion looks at petroleum industry waste pits associated with decades of oil and gas development in the area.

The procedure for the release of the reports has been in place for a year, and Gov. Matt Mead feels strongly the documents shouldn’t be publicly released before they’re finalized, Mead spokesman Renny MacKay said Friday.

MacKay said the state will give Encana and EPA no more than 30 days to review and comment on the reports. [Emphasis added]

[Refer also to:

Pavillion Wyoming Groundwater Pollution Reports funded by Encana and the State plan to allow review by Encana, the EPA and “independent” experts (like Dr. Alexander Blyth?) before public release

Freedom of Information records show the Alberta regulator secretly edited the “independent” report by Dr. Alec (Alexander) Blyth with the Alberta Research Council (now Alberta Innovates) on the regulator’s investigation of Ernst’s contaminated well water , dismissing it as natural:

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