Drilling has been going on in the Pavillion area for more than 40 years.
Well construction and completion practices have improved considerably in 40 years. Environmental concerns rate high in any oilfield activity today. Contamination is much more likely to come from a casing leak or poor cementing practices than from a one-time frac job.
One environmentalist said pinpointing fracking as the cause of contamination there has been difficult in part because petroleum companies in years past didn't publicly disclose the chemicals they pumped underground.
I call BS. Chemicals injected in the past, together with naturally occurring natural gas constituents (benzenes, toluene, xylenes, naphthalenes, etc.) would make their way into the groundwater in the event of a casing leak or poor cementing as mentioned above. Again, the presence of frac chemicals in groundwater does NOT mean that hydraulic fracturing caused them to be there.