Lawmakers must take action now on fracking
http://www.centredaily.com/2010/10/15/2273735/lawmakers-must-take-action-now.html
Lawmakers must take action now on fracking
October 15, 2010 12:36am EDT
Pennsylvania’s legacy: raped by timber, oil and coal industries. The Boomtown Syndrome should make us cautious about empty job and wealth promises. Visit coal country; canoe the Red (from mine acid) Moshannon to see this legacy.
Industry and political leaders encourage another boom-bust cycle with the rush to drill for natural gas. The advent of horizontal drilling and hydrofracking made deep shale drilling possible; Marcellus Shale lies under 65 percent of Pennsylvania.
Dick Cheney, behind closed doors, exempted this industry from America’s environmental laws — the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Community Right to Know Act. The stage was set for the wild-west mentality of gas drilling. That drama has moved east — epicenter, Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania government was not prepared. The Department of Environmental Protection issued permits for 4,000 Marcellus wells: 1,435 violations in 2.5 years, 952 likely to harm the environment. So far in 2010, 969 wells drilled and 852 violations.
DEP is playing catch up; they are not protecting us. This industry’s trucks damage our roads; state police found 40 percent had safety violations. Hydrocarbon emissions foul our air. Gas drilling and frack water pollute our water — ever heard of Dimock, Susquehanna County? Treatment of the industry’s wastewater — flowback, which includes a toxic brew of secret proprietary chemicals, salts and possible low-level radioactivity. This mixture is diluted and dumped into our streams.
This is the “treatment” mentality of the industrial revolution from a century ago — just send it downstream. Drill cuttings, possibly low-level radioactive waste, also present a disposal problem.
An industrial grid will be constructed over rural Pennsylvania and our public lands. It will take one pad every square mile, eight wells per pad, 5 million gallons of frack water containing 25,000 gallons of toxic chemicals per well. Do the math: Pennsylvania will be radically, permanently changed. 250,000 wells to get this gas?
The impacts will, by any measure, be huge. A conservative approach would be to slow down, get an accurate picture and decide how to proceed. We ask legislators to take action:
•No additional permits until state government enacts laws and regulations to make Marcellus gas well drilling safe and environmentally sound.
•Reform the Oil and Gas Act: require mandatory inspections, disclose fracking chemicals, extend the presumption of pollution and protective setback distances, adequate bonds, protect municipal zoning and police powers — bonding requirements of $2,500 per well are ridiculously low.
•No leases on public lands until an analysis is conducted on the impact of existing leasing — one-third of the 2.1 million acres of state forests has already been leased.
•Enact a severance tax comparable to other states and provide funding for communities impacted by gas drilling and for environmental conservation — 96 percent of natural gas is produced in states with a severance tax.
•No “forced pooling.” Forced pooling only undermines landowner rights.
Remember, the Pennsylvania Constitution says: “The people have a right to clean air, pure water and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.
“Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.”
Gary Thornbloom, of Julian, is chairman of the Sierra Club Moshannon Group. He can be reached at bear knob@verizon.net.