It's been an ongoing dialogue for months, but now three families are filing class action lawsuits against six natural gas drilling companies - asking them to monitor water and air pollution near their homes.
"There's certainly a risk because of the chemicals involved," said Tim Holton, the attorney representing all three of the homeowners in the case.
Last month, we spoke with the former owner of one of the water wells in question, Ron Hake. Although he's not part of the lawsuit, he said he saw chemicals rising from area water wells as far back as December.
"It's very probable there's natural gas in a lot of these water wells," said Hake.
He eventually moved in order to get away from the problem.
"When you take certain action such as drilling and fracking, there are consequences to it and when you have a consequence as a result of it, it's their responsibility to step up," said Holton.
The gas companies involved include Southwestern Energy Company, XTO Energy, Chesapeake Energy Corporation, BHP Billiton Petroleum, Frontier Gas Services and Kinder Morgan Treating.
We called every company but only got two e-mails back, both declining to issue any sort of statement at this time.
The companies do all offer mottos on their websites. Southwestern Energy's homepage states the company is committed to "providing responsible environmental stewardship."
"We've dealt with a lot of large companies in the past and that's not the issue. It's whether you're on the side of what's right and we believe we are," said Holton.
The phone calls were the first time most of the companies had heard of the lawsuit. However, according to Holton, they should all be served within the next two weeks.
