On the map Lakeview Drive in the Woodlands (pictured) is a through road, however, most of the grid-like network of roads in the largely undeveloped property are unmaintained and often differ from maps of the area. (Sept. 2020)

It's been a decade since many residents of the Woodlands neighborhood in Connoquenessing Township have claimed nearby fracking by the now-defunct Rex Energy damaged or destroyed their water wells, and 60 of those families are still retrieving donated drinking and cooking water each week from White Oak Springs Presbyterian Church.

John Stolz, director of the Center for Environmental Research and Education at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, tested 33 well samples in the Woodlands, which is an unmaintained former campground off Route 528.

He also surveyed 147 families in 2012 who lived in the rural, wooded neighborhood.

Stolz said his finding revealed families in the Woodlands relied on water filters to remove the iron or smell of sulfur from their water supplies, but everything changed when the fracking began on the outskirts of the neighborhood.

When fracking began, some residents found foul black or foamy discharge coming from their faucets. Others changed their whole-house water filters weekly instead of monthly.Others lost their water supply altogether and now buy water to fill private water buffaloes on their properties.Stolz' research turned up iron and manganese in many of the affected wells.He also determined the wells in the Woodlands are at widely varying depths.“The shallowest well was 65 feet and the deepest was 900 feet,” Stolz said. “We tried to look at elevation, but there was no rhyme or reason as to why everyone had the same problems.”He said some water tested within the normal ranges and continues to be used by homeowners in the Woodlands.“Not everyone was affected, but it was because they had different well pipes, well depths and were different distances from the (gas drilling) operations,” Stoltz said.He could not discuss all of his findings regarding the Woodlands because he served as an expert witness in hearings in a lawsuit brought against Rex Energy by a group of Woodlands residents.Rex Energy in 2018 provided $158,875 in settlements to eight Woodlands residents, but stressed at the time that the payments did not indicate an admission that its drilling operations had damaged the residents' wells.

Many of those who feel for the residents of the Woodlands say the township should use its annual shale gas impact fee funds to run public water lines to the Woodlands or provide some other relief to the residents.But Terry Steinheiser, president of the Connoquenessing Township board of supervisors, said the Woodlands residents had a chance to get public water and failed to follow the required steps to do so.Steinheiser said in the spring of 2013, Rex Energy offered to leave a water line they had used to frack a well on nearby Shannon Road so the properties in the Woodlands could have public water.The line would have pumped water to a filling station, which would have in turn piped water to the homes in the Woodlands.He said part of the agreement required the Woodlands residents to establish an association, which they never did.“If they would have established an association, they could have hired a contractor to run lines to their homes,” Steinheiser said.He said the line was to be turned over to the association in the fall of 2013 or spring of 2014, but the deal never went through because the residents did not form an association.He said Rex Energy offered to build a pump station and the filling station for the project.“Now, they're complaining again,” Steinheiser said.Regarding the annual shale gas impact fee received from the county and disbursed to municipalities, Steinheiser said the residents should have taken the offer from Rex Energy.“The problem is that they want everything for free and for us to do it, and we've offered them options they haven't followed through with,” Steinheiser said.

The Woodlands was originally a campground that was subdivided into parcels by the owner, who sold them off and moved out of state many years ago.The dirt roads are deeply rutted and some are difficult to navigate due to their condition.“(The Woodlands) was never designed to be a development and now they are coming to us to rectify their situation and we did not create that problem,” Steinheiser said.The township will not take over the roads in the Woodlands until they are brought up to state standards, which seems unlikely in the largely low-income neighborhood.Stolz feels the residents did not form the association because they intentionally eschew government intervention in their lives.“They live there because they think it's freedom,” Stolz said. “But water is a right.”The county commissioners on Wednesday tabled the tax sale of six properties in the Woodlands to ensure the successful bidders in the sale are aware of what type of property they are buying.