Symbol of PA gas drilling opposition succumbs to offer of money

www.mcall.com/news/local/carpenter/mc-pc-marcellus-gas-drilling-opposition-20121124,0,5968177.column
Paul Carpenter
November 24, 2012

You have to give Denise Dennis some credit. She did not come cheap. The price tag she put on her virtue is about the same as the amount Gov. Tom Corbett took to sell his soul — or Pennsylvania’s soul, that is — to the gas drilling robber barons of Texas.

Because of her family legacy, however, some might feel Dennis should not have compromised her integrity at any price.

A Philadelphia Inquirer story, published in Friday’s edition of The Morning Call, said that Dennis, as recently as 2010, was a prominent opponent of the gas drilling boom sweeping across Pennsylvania’s portion of the gas-bearing Marcellus Shale formation.

“The process for extracting natural gas from shale is as dirty as coal mining,” she was quoted as saying at a meeting of Philadelphia City Council.

(That city is concerned about drilling because the robber barons want to add the Delaware River watershed to the vast areas already ravaged by hydraulic fracturing, often called fracking, which forces millions of gallons of chemical-laced water deep underground at each well. The putrid concoction breaks up rocks so they release gas, and much of it often returns to the surface to threaten streams.)

Dennis, who lives in Philadelphia, is a descendant of a key figure in the state’s history. She is the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Prince Perkins, a Revolutionary War veteran who was among the settlers of what is now Susquehanna County in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Her family, the story said, owns a 153-acre farm in that county just five miles from Dimock, a town made famous when residents complained about their well water being contaminated by the Cabot Oil and Gas outfit from Texas.

Corbett’s state regulators said Cabot was not to blame, but a documentary film showed how the residents could ignite the water coming out of their faucets. Lawsuits were filed but Cabot and the residents reached a settlement, leaving much of the rest of the state in legal limbo.

Friday’s story said Dennis previously hurled a “dramatic denunciation” of gas drilling, equating it to the tobacco industry, but her “fervor has subsided in the past two years,” thanks to Cabot’s “salesmanship.”

This month, it was reported, she signed a lease to let Cabot drill for gas under her family’s famous farm. “I decided to stop demonizing the industry,” she said. Details for the new deal were not available, but the story said that in 2010 she was offered $800,000 plus royalties on extracted gas.

(Corbett gave the gas robber barons everything they wanted after they gave him around $1 million in so-called “political campaign contributions.”)

“Yes, I was vehement,” Dennis was quoted as saying when her opposition to drilling was based on principle, “but where did that get me?” It certainly did not get her anything like $800,000.

As the story observed, the family farm in question was pioneered by Prince Perkins, a free black soldier from Connecticut who  fought in the American Revolution and moved to Pennsylvania in 1793.

On past occasions, I have written about some of the contributions of those black soldiers, often ignored by history teachers.

After a 2006 visit to Yorktown, Va., where Lord Cornwallis was forced to surrender to the ragtag but gallant forces of Gen. George Washington in 1781, I wrote about the final skirmish of that final battle.

With Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette in command, the last two redoubts (small fortifications) were stormed by Americans in some of the most heroic actions in American history. In the final clash, at Redoubt 10, the soldiers who overcame entrenched British defenders in hand-to-hand combat mainly were black.

They were freed slaves in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, right next door to Perkins’ Connecticut. Until that visit to Yorktown, I never knew the final clash of the Revolutionary War was won by blacks.

Later, I wrote about the valor and sacrifice of the American Revolution’s soldiers at Valley Forge through the awful winter of 1777-78. Until I made my most recent visit to that site in 2010, I never knew those soldiers included four regiments that consisted, predominantly, of black soldiers from Connecticut and Rhode Island.

After I saw Friday’s story, I went looking on the Internet (I could not reach anybody at the Susquehanna County Historical Society or at the public library in Montrose) and found all sorts of references to Perkins.

Not only was he a soldier in the Revolution, I learned, but he was among those who were willing to suffer and to sacrifice everything at Valley Forge.

Therefore, the farm Perkins and his family established in Susquehanna County, long before the atrocity of slavery ended in America, has been nominated for the National Register of Historic Places.

And now his great-great-great-great-granddaughter apparently has decided to let the Texas gas drillers defile it with their foul fracking fluids — for $800,000 plus royalties on the gas.

I admit $800,000 may be irresistible to somebody who does not enjoy Corbett’s wealth, but I find it very sad that there is no one in Pennsylvania who can stand in the way of what the robber barons want.

paul.carpenter@mcall.com 610-820-6176

Conservation groups debate gas drilling ties

www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/pennsylvania/mc-pa-gas-drilling-conservation-money-20121123,0,4417994.story

Conservation groups considering accepting donations from drilling industry.

By Kevin Begos, Of The Associated Press
9:02 p.m. EST, November 23, 2012

PITTSBURGH — As a natural gas drilling boom sweeps Pennsylvania and other states, conservation groups are debating whether it makes sense to work with the industry to minimize impacts to the environment — and whether to accept industry donations.

The big question is “how to deal with this overwhelming impact,” said Phil Wallis, executive director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Audubon Society, adding that the industry “in general, is interested in resolving these issues.”

The drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has made it possible to tap into deep reserves of oil and gas but has also raised concerns about pollution. Large volumes of water, along with sand and hazardous chemicals, are injected underground to break rock apart and free the oil and gas.

Over the past five years, thousands of new wells have been drilled across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio, and hundreds of miles of pipeline have been laid to transport the gas to market. And that’s just a snapshot of a similar boom in Texas, Colorado and other states.

Wallis and the Pennsylvania Audubon chapter discovered that even casual conversations with the drilling industry can generate controversy.

In August, Audubon partnered with the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, and the Ruffed Grouse Society to hold a series of gatherings for birdwatchers, anglers, hunters and hikers to ask questions about drilling. The meetings didn’t attract much notice until it emerged that some had discussed whether the industry might donate $30 million to set up an endowment to fund research on drilling impacts.

The idea of donations “came up several times,” said Don Williams, a Harleysville, Montgomery County, resident.

“It caught me completely off guard. I see that as somehow basically latching on and riding the coattails of the industry,” Williams said. “The message itself bothered me.”

After Williams wrote a blog post about the meeting, Audubon quickly responded that there had been no decision to seek gas drilling donations. Wallis said the $30 million was just a hypothetical number about funding a research project on drilling that a number of conservation groups might provide staff for.

Williams said a representative of Chesapeake Energy was at the meeting, acting as more of a general industry representative. Chesapeake spokesman Rory Sweeny declined to comment on whether the company is donating to any environmental groups.

Two more public meetings with outdoor groups are scheduled for December, said Steve Forde, a spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition.

“The sportsmen and conservation communities are an important part of Pennsylvania’s heritage and key partners in responsible shale gas development,” Forde wrote in an email.

But he added that the coalition hasn’t discussed donations with any of the outdoor groups that helped set up the sessions.

It’s a sensitive issue. Earlier this year, the Sierra Club acknowledged that from 2007 to 2010 it had secretly accepted more than $26 million from individuals or subsidies connected to Chesapeake. After deciding it would no longer take such donations, the group launched a campaign that is critical of the gas drilling industry.

Environmental groups and some scientists say there hasn’t been enough research on water and air pollution issues that stem from drilling. The industry and many federal and state officials say the practice is safe when done properly, and that many rules on air pollution and disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking are being strengthened.

Sitting down with people in the gas drilling industry makes sense, said Mark Brownstein, the chief counsel for the energy program at the Environmental Defense Fund.

“If environmental groups who are both passionate and knowledgeable fail to engage the natural gas industry, who will?” Brownstein asked. “If we simply sit and protest, we’re missing an opportunity” to create stronger regulations.

Some conservation groups are finding that they can’t avoid the industry.

The Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania owns or has easements to about 500 acres of land in the region, and drilling company representatives have approached them numerous times, according to executive director Jim Bonner.

Bonner said the chapter decided that current regulations aren’t strong enough to meet their standards for environmental protection, so they haven’t signed any gas leases. But they’re not rejecting the idea.

“We kind of put up the mirror, and said, we are consumers of gas,” and that it would be hypocritical to not try to understand all the pros and cons around drilling, and Audubon’s place in the debate.

“If a company came to us and said we’ve developed a process that does not use any chemicals, we would probably almost feel obliged to consider that, if only to help demonstrate a best practice could be developed,” Bonner said. “We all agree that energy is needed. I’d love to think that we can extract it better here than somewhere else around the world.”

John Eichinger, president of the Ruffed Grouse Society, hopes the discussions with the drilling industry lead to some changes. He thinks the Marcellus Shale Coalition may support some of the suggestions that conservation groups made for stricter regulations.