For the first time ever, a study demonstrated that fracking has contaminated underground water reservoirs, BuzzFeed reported. The polluted aquifer is near the small town of Pavillion, Wyoming.

The study's lead author Dominic DiGiulio, a former EPA scientist, used public records and new water samples to build on an investigation the Environmental Protection Agency stalled in 2013. After receiving complaints from Pavillion residents about the drinking water's bad taste and smell, the EPA opened an investigation in September 2008, the study reports. The agency sampled domestic wells in March 2009 and January 2010, and issued a preliminary report in 2011. That report showed that chemicals used in fracking had leaked from unlined dumping pits into Pavillion's groundwater. The drilling industry pushed back against the report, and the EPA never finalized its findings. Instead, in 2013, the agency turned the investigation over to the state of Wyoming, which has issued more inconclusive reports since then.