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Pennsylvania is the land of the amazing coincidence, where politicians' good friends happen to get huge state contracts and public officials' relatives often are the most qualified people to fill public jobs.

That pervasive atmosphere of coincidence does not extend to the Marcellus Shale gas field in Northeast Pennsylvania, however. A study by researchers at Duke University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that concentrations of methane, propane and ethane were higher in water wells within a kilometer (0.62 miles) of a gas well than in water wells farther away from gas wells.

The industry and its proponents in the state government often have said that fracking, the process of forcing gas from the shale formation deep underground, does not cause water contamination, and that methane occurs naturally nearer to the surface, where water wells are drilled at much shallower depths than gas wells.

But the gas wells are drilled through aquifers that are tapped by the water wells, and the gas released by fracking travels to the surface through those deep well shafts.

The Duke researchers were able to differentiate between gas that originated near the surface and gas that came from deeper underground.

State regulators already had discovered that poorly constructed gas wells in Bradford and Susquehanna counties had allowed gas to migrate into some water wells, prompting revised regulations.

The study demonstrates that striking a balance between the economic benefits of the gas enterprise and maintaining environmental quality is a work in progress.

Lawmakers and regulators should use the study to ensure that gas wells protect water sources. And they should end Pennsylvania's status as the only state without rigorous water well standards, to ensure that those wells also work to limit gas infiltration.