Pro-drilling group wants states to regulate gas drilling

A coalition of landowners in the Delaware River Basin plans to tell the interstate agency that regulates water quality in the basin to stop trying to regulate natural gas drilling.

Instead, the pro-drilling group suggests the Delaware River Basin Commission renegotiate and strengthen its agreements with its member states, including Pennsylvania and New York, and let those states handle the regulation of gas drilling in the basin’s borders.

“They are going to put in rules that duplicate what the states are already doing, they’ll be forced to create a staff which will be green and inexperienced, and they will not be able to do the job,” Peter Wynne, spokesman for the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance, said Friday after the coalition held a press briefing in Honesdale about its criticisms.

The group, which finds the commission’s proposed drilling regulations “totally unworkable,” will be among many concerned citizens, lawmakers and groups that will offer comment on the draft rules in written testimony and at public hearings next week.

The proposed rules are available for review at www.drbc.net.

A set of local hearings will be held at Honesdale High School at 1:30 and 6 p.m. Tuesday.

Published: February 20, 2011
http://standardspeaker.com/news/pro-drilling-group-wants-states-to-regulate-gas-drilling-1.1107714