DEP venting abandoned well on Ross Township property

At least two families are displaced after an abandoned gas well was discovered on the property of a Ross Township home.Peoples Gas confirms to Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 that dangerously elevated gas levels have caused a family and neighbors to vacate their homes while remediation work takes place.The property owners of the home where the well was discovered said they were alerted to elevated gas levels in their home three weeks ago by a combustible gas detector. They immediately notified Peoples Gas, which arranged to have the electricity shut off.“You know, we didn’t smell anything. There was no smell,” Dana Martinelli said.Martinelli said his combustible gas monitors rang the alarm, alerting him to elevated gas levels in his home. Peoples Gas responded immediately and found the abandoned gas well.“Being here 18 years, I have never seen that steel pipe, and it was not on a survey. It’s not on any of the DEP government maps,” Martinelli said.The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection confirmed it’s not on DEP maps but was unable to confirm if the well is the source of the stray gas.”They found the hot spot in our garage and the bottom part of our basement around outlets, so we were getting 10% – 11% concentrated methane gas around our outlets,” Martinelli said.“As a safety precaution, DEP recommends that occupants vacate any building that methane concentrations are at 10% of the lower explosive limit. The lower explosive limit (LEL) is the concentration of gas/vapors in the air which will explode when ignited at 5% gas or 100% of the LEL. DEP also cautions the public that levels can change quickly and without warning,” a spokesperson for the DEP said. Daily testing, remediation work outside and inside his home, and work to vent and plug the well is the first step toward finding out, according to the DEP.Martinelli said there are other old gas wells in the neighborhood. His family and at least one other family, according to Peoples Gas, are now going on three weeks displaced.“We’re talking about an abandoned, orphaned well that was just discovered by the DEP in a highly populated suburban area, just 12 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh, and with homes that have exploded in Plum and Crescent Township, and our home had levels of explosive readings, that is extremely terrifying,” Martinelli said.With no insurance coverage for this scenario, Martinelli is paying out of pocket for a place to stay while he awaits answers from the DEP.“We’re literally displaced, have really no financial recourse and we could be out for months,” Martinelli said. “We could lose everything, really.” He is urging others to find out if issues of hazardous gases are covered by their homeowner’s insurance.“Make sure that if you live in Western Pennsylvania, you have an amendment to your insurance policy that it can take care of poisonous or hazardous gas. We were excluded from that language in our policy,” Martinelli said.The DEP’s venting of the well is expected to be complete by the end of this week, then crews potentially move toward plugging the well.“A combustible gas monitor – which, as noted above, the homeowners in this story owned and utilized – will detect gas at very low levels and will also detect sources of gas that are not odorized, such as gas emanating directly from wells or natural sources. These monitors, which can be purchased at various retail stores, offer an extra safeguard for any homeowners concerned about combustible gas inside their homes and will emit an audible signal upon detection,” a spokesperson for the DEP said.

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