Sherry Vargson has cooked with water from a five-gallon jug for the past year. It's inconvenient, but preferable to using tap water containing enough methane gas that she can light a match and see an orange flame flare out of the faucet. Many water supplies in northern Pennsylvania have long contained detectable levels of methane, because of poorly constructed water wells and the unusual geologic features here. But the contamination in Ms. Vargson's existing well is among the first cases that state regulators have attributed to natural-gas drilling, prompting a normally competitive group of drilling companies to work together to fix the problem.
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