ALLENTOWN — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has promised to deliver water to a northeastern Pennsylvania village where a natural gas driller has been accused of tainting homeowners’ wells with methane and possibly hazardous chemicals, residents said Friday.

Homeowners in Dimock Township have been without a reliable supply of clean water since Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., the Houston-based drilling firm blamed for polluting their aquifer, stopped making daily deliveries more than a month ago.

Three Dimock residents said the EPA told them Friday that it’s hiring a private contractor to deliver water to their homes, about 20 miles south of the New York state line. The EPA said Friday that no decision had been made.

The EPA told residents only a month ago their water was fine, then backtracked as more sampling data came in that the agency said merited further investigation.

Cabot won permission from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to stop daily deliveries of bulk and bottled water on Nov. 30. Since then, anti-drilling groups have been paying to have water delivered to about a dozen households. But the deliveries are sporadic and, with winter setting in, residents say they can’t continue indefinitely.

“We’re ecstatic that we’re at least getting our water back, that we’ll have a safe source of water,” said Dimock resident Julie Sautner, who said an EPA official called Friday to tell her about the water deliveries. “We’ve been left like a bunch of chickens scratching around for water. We shouldn’t have to live like this.”

Residents were furious when the EPA told them in late November that sampling data reviewed by the agency did not show that their well water posed an “immediate health threat.” EPA officials returned to Dimock last week to reopen the probe and said they might begin their own sampling of residents’ water.

Another resident, Scott Ely, said his family ran out of water Friday. He said he was evaluating next steps with his wife when the EPA called.

Residents blame the pollution on a drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which water, sand and chemicals are blasted deep underground to extract natural gas from shale rock. The use of fracking has led to dramatic gains in U.S. natural gas production.