"More than two years ago the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a gas industry trade group, began building an electronic database to house information about the water quality in thousands of private wells across Pennsylvania."

"It’s made up of 'pre-drill' or baseline data– critical information that helps establish whether drilling operations may have caused water contamination issues.

The project is already up and running, but there are no plans to make it public.

Instead, it’s available to gas companies, the state Department of Environmental Protection, and one researcher at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who has signed a confidentiality agreement."

Marie Cusick reports for StateImpact Texas via NPR May 28, 2013. [2]