Getting Your Water Tested, Pre-Fracking

  |  July 5, 2012

Flickr/cybergibbons

Whether your town has a ban on fracking or not, and whether or not you sign away your mineral rights, it’s a good idea to get your water tested before any gas drilling begins — that way you’ll know if there’s been a change to your groundwater. The Community Science Foundation, an upstate New York-based non-profit, will test your water for you, then “create a public database reporting test results for area water supplies, providing a baseline measurement that could be used in the case that fracking activities are conducted in the future to help diagnose contamination,” according to their press release.

We bumped into them at the Callicoon Farmers’ Market this weekend, which is one place you can find more info about them. It costs $680 for the independent testing (as opposed to getting your water tested by the gas companies themselves, which they’ll gladly pay for), but it might be worth it, should you find your property values affected in the aftermath of fracking. “If CSI finds at least 15 area residents to use its testing services, it will provide a 16th set of tests, free of charge, on a stream or lake decided by the community, by vote at the Callicoon and Jeffersonville farmers’ markets.”

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