Pennsylvania’s Former Top Environmental Cop Gets His Wish

Former Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger got his wish. Gasland did not win an Oscar Sunday night.

In a Feb. 26 blog post, Hanger wrote: “I am not pulling for Gasland to win an Oscar for Best Documentary”

Hanger, who agreed to be interviewed by filmmaker Josh Fox for the documentary when he was still serving as DEP secretary, argued on his blog that Gasland “presents a selective, distorted view of gas drilling and the energy choices America faces today. If Gasland were about the airline industry, every flight would crash and all airlines would be irresponsible. In Gasland, the gas industry is unsafe from beginning to end and is one unending environmental nightmare with no benefits. Gasland seeks to inflame public opinion to shut down the natural gas industry and is effective. In pursuing this goal, Gasland treats cavalierly facts both by omitting important ones and getting wrong others.”

Gasland takes a close look at the natural gas industry’s use of hydraulic fracturing technology to produce natural gas and its potential impact on drinking water supplies and the environment in general. The natural gas industry has been waging an aggressive campaign to discredit the documentary since it was released in early 2010. As part of its campaign, the industry has trumpeted comments Hanger made in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer in which he called Fox a “propagandist” and dismissed Gasland as “fundamentally dishonest” and “a deliberately false presentation for dramatic effect.’”

Fox interviewed Hanger in his office in Harrisburg. During the interview, Hanger argued that Fox, as the person on the other side of the camera, could “wash his hands” of what occurs as a result of energy development in Pennsylvania. But as the state’s top environmental cop, Hanger said he had a duty to make “real decisions in the real world” that often involve trade-offs. For example, the nation needs natural gas in order to run its economy. Extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania or any producing basin inevitably causes some level of environmental damage. But Hanger stressed the DEP was doing whatever it could to protect water supplies and that any residents whose water was contaminated by gas drilling would be provided with clean drinking water.

Hanger is a strong advocate of renewable energy. But he recognizes that renewables cannot completely replace fossil fuels in powering the global economy. Because it is a cleaner burning fuel than coal, Hanger has long been a proponent of natural gas.

In 2008, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell named Hanger, who at the time was the top official at the Pennsylvania-based environmental group Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, a.k.a. PennFuture, to head the state DEP, which is the state agency responsible for ensuring compliance with state environmental regulations.

Rendell was a big supporter of natural gas development during his term in office, a period in which natural gas companies swarmed the state, buying up rights to drill for natural gas and then dramatically ramping up their drilling activities in the state’s portion of the Marcellus Shale. And Hanger was Rendell’s point man at the DEP during the final two years of his term.

During his tenure at the DEP, which ended in January when Rendell left office, Hanger often made statements touting the tremendous economic opportunities for landowners and drilling companies in the Marcellus Shale.

As the DEP’s acting secretary, prior to his official confirmation, Hanger told the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee during a September 2008 hearing that “there is no question that the Marcellus Shale holds tremendous economic potential for Pennsylvania’s families and its communities.”

Hanger added that “this exciting potential also brings with it the need to act responsibly and ensure that Pennsylvania’s valuable natural resources are not sacrificed in the process.”

Later that year, Hanger noted that the DEP had received approval to impose higher drilling fees on natural gas producers that would allow the state to receive greater funding to cover expenses for permit reviews and well site inspections.

“With nearly 8,000 drilling permits issued so far this year and drilling taking place in areas of the state outside our traditional oil and gas region, we need to make sure that we have sufficient personnel to properly manage development of Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale natural gas reserves,” Hanger said.

Nowhere in his comments do you get the sense that Hanger has any qualms about the staggering number of well permits being issued by the DEP and how the expanded drilling activity would turn regions of Pennsylvania into industrial drilling zones.

In January 2009, while still serving as the DEP’s acting secretary, Hanger highlighted the department’s partnership with natural gas producers. “The department is committed to working alongside the drilling industry to develop new treatment technologies to treat this wastewater that will allow our natural gas industry and our economy to thrive while protecting the health of our rivers and streams,” he said in a statement.

When it comes to natural gas drilling, the nightmare scenario for environmental regulators is if natural gas drilling companies start operating irresponsibly and cutting corners, leading to wastewater spills or contaminated drinking water incidents occurring on a regular basis. State regulators obviously would be appalled by the environmental damage caused by such incidents. But state regulators also are worried about losing the public’s confidence. If that happens, it could lead to a surge in support for a moratorium or the complete banning of drilling in certain regions—exactly what regulators in energy producing states are tasked to avoid.

Since leaving the DEP earlier this year, Hanger has spent large chunks of time defending his tenure as Pennsylvania’s top environmental regulator. He now edits an energy and environmental blog titled “Fact of the Day.” The tagline of his blog is: “Discussion about key facts in energy, environment, the economy, and politics. Tired of ideological junk? This is your place.”

Hanger apparently views his way of thinking as non-ideological, or as one that is not tainted by an agenda. But, of course, Hanger is as ideological as the people and organizations who he would claim are spreading “ideological junk.” His agenda, as it pertains to natural gas, is to promote natural gas as a fuel source as long as its production is performed as safely as reasonably possible.

Aside from expressing hope that Gasland didn’t win an Oscar, Hanger has used his blog in recent days to defend his tenure at the DEP from an article that ran last weekend in the New York Times. Hanger told a natural gas industry publication called NGI’s Shale Daily that the Times reporter, Ian Urbina, “had a goal to start with and he wanted to fit the information to a narrative. … It was willful and deliberate.” The reporter “knew how to get on the front page. It should be actionable… The New York Times would be successfully sued in Europe for this type of story,” Hanger told NGI’s Shale Daily.

Among other things, Hanger argued the Times story implied that Pennsylvania does not enforce its drilling regulations. To refute that claim, Hanger pointed to the enforcement actions for drilling violations imposed on EOG Resources Inc. and Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. “They had to stop drilling for months … costing them probably millions of dollars,” Hanger told NGI’s Shale Daily. “That’s not in the story.”

During his tenure as DEP secretary, Pennsylvania led the nation in natural gas oversight staff hiring, Hanger states on his blog. Under his successor at the DEP, who reports to the state’s new Republican governor, Tom Corbett, the department will likely be less aggressive in regulating natural gas and coal producers in the state. In fact, it would probably be fair to say that Hanger was one of the most conscientious state environmental chiefs in the United States. But such a superlative speaks more to the general lack of effective environmental protection among state regulators than it does to Hanger’s willingness to protect the environment at any cost.

Energy companies and their regulators believe humans have a God-given right to access the planet’s “natural resources” in order to sustain the American way of life. Other people believe humans need to immediately disavow their narcissistic and affluent way of life and start letting the planet heal. Such a move includes curtailing the consumption of fossil fuels, including natural gas, even if it burns 50% cleaner than coal.

By Press Action
March 01, 2011
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/padep02012011/