WAYNE COUNTY -- About 100 homeowners in Wayne County will soon know exactly what's in their drinking water.
A study being done this summer will give scientists and property owners a starting point in one of the few areas in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania where natural gas drilling isn't allowed; at least not right now.
For the past few months, Jamie Roche-Knecht and Rich Reynolds have been going around Wayne County taking water samples from homes with drinking wells.
Roche-Knecht is with the Wayne Conservation District and got a $250,000 grant to do the testing, along with the U.S. Geological Survey's contribution of $100,000. It's all to help folks better understand what they're drinking.
"Most of them say, 'I've always wondered what's in my water, but it tastes good.' I love that comment, because I know what they mean, I grew up on well water," said Roche-Knecht, a watershed specialist.
The tedious work takes about an hour at each well and hydrologist Rich Reynolds said he's looking for all sorts of things like radon and methane.
And the sampling is done the same way, every time.
"You want to collect the sample under controlled conditions. You want to know where the water's coming from," said Reynolds. "It will provide a baseline for whatever comes down the road."
Down the road could mean drilling for natural gas, banned in the Delaware River Basin for now, but if the moratorium was ever lifted, then Wayne County would know what was in the groundwater before it starts.
"We're unique in that way in Pennsylvania that we have a huge amount of private wells. And most people don't take the time to test their water like they pump their septic system," added Roche-Knecht.
Dave Nichols' well near Honesdale was tested last month, the samples have been sent off to the labs and he'll have the results by next year. But it might have cost him thousands of dollars if he had his water tested privately instead of through the study.
"I'm glad they chose me to do it. It's a free water test. It's something I'm sure has never been done to this extent," said Nichols.
Nichols and other property owners, chosen at random in the study, could know what's in their water as soon as next summer.