Drilling areas cause for concern
http://www.timesleader.com/news/Drilling_areas_cause_for_concern_06-17-2011.html
Posted: June 18, 2011
Health matters Pa. wants to create registry to track illnesses in fracking communities
HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Corbett’s top health adviser said Friday that he wants to make Pennsylvania the first state to create a registry to track illnesses in communities near heavy drilling in the Marcellus Shale natural gas formation to determine what kind of impact, if any, the activity has on public health.
Health Secretary Eli Avila told Corbett’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission that creating such a registry is the timeliest and most important step the Department of Health could take, and that his agency is not aware of anything like it in other drilling states.
“We’re really at the frontiers of this and we can make a speedy example for all the other states,” Avila told the commission at its fourth meeting.
Collecting information on drilling-related health complaints, investigating them, centralizing the information in one database and then comparing illnesses in drilling communities with non-drilling communities could help refute or verify claims that drilling has an impact on public health, he said. The aggregation of data and information also would allow the Department of Health to make its findings public, in contrast to the privacy that surrounds its investigation into individual health complaints and the findings that may result.
The Marcellus Shale formation, considered the nation’s largest-known natural gas reservoir, lies primarily beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio. Pennsylvania is the center of activity, with more than 3,000 wells drilled in the past three years and thousands more planned in the coming years as thick shale emerges as an affordable, plentiful and profitable source of natural gas.
The rapid growth of deep shale drilling and its involvement of high-volume hydraulic fracturing, chemicals and often-toxic wastewater are spurring concerns in Pennsylvania about poisoned air and water.
“As drilling increases, I anticipate, at least in the short term, a proportionate increase in concerns and complaints which the department must be prepared to address,” he said.
In the past year or so, the Department of Health has received several dozen or so health complaints, he said.
One woman, Crystal Stroud of Granville Summit in northern Pennsylvania, told an anti-drilling rally in the Capitol this month that she is hearing from others in Bradford County about bizarre and sudden health problems that they blame on contaminated water from the area’s heavy drilling.
Stroud herself blames her barium poisoning on well water polluted by drilling near her home, and accused state agencies of turning a blind eye.
“I am extremely confused as to why our Health Department is not interested in these issues and no one from (the) Pennsylvania Health Department has contacted us, and why are they not investigating this?” Stroud, 29, told the crowd on June 7.
“Every week I receive a phone call from someone different in my county that has unexplained rashes, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, high barium levels, a child with blisters all over his face from his mother bathing him in the water, and even a woman whose spleen burst in an unexplained way, all with contaminated water,” she said.
A spokesman for Corbett has said both the departments of Health and Environmental Protection have active investigations into Stroud’s claims, and the company that drilled the well, Dallas-based Chief Oil & Gas LLC, has denied responsibility for Stroud’s health problems.
On Friday, Avila said his agency has found no links between drilling and the illnesses and diseases presented to it so far, but he added that a wider study is necessary to determine whether there are any associations, and a health registry could accomplish that.
Such health registries are common, and in the past have been created to monitor and study data related to cancer and rare diseases, health department officials said. To set up a drilling-related registry and fully investigate drilling-related health complaints would require another $2 million a year for the department and possibly require the help of the state’s schools of public health, Avila said.
Shale drilling requires blending huge volumes of water with chemical additives and injecting it under high pressure into the ground to help shatter the thick rock — a process called hydraulic fracturing. Some of that water returns to the surface, in addition to the gas, as brine potentially tainted with metals like barium and strontium and trace radioactivity by the drilling companies.
State eyes new instance of methane near drilling
http://www.timesleader.com/news/State_eyes_new_instance_of_methane_near_drilling_06-16-2011.html
Posted: June 17, 2011
The flammable, explosive gas was found in several Lycoming County water wells.
MUNCY — State environmental officials are investigating another instance of methane contaminating water in northern Pennsylvania near a Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling operation.
The Department of Environmental Protection said Thursday that it found the flammable, explosive gas in seven water wells in Lycoming County and gas bubbling into the nearby Little Muncy Creek.
DEP spokesman Daniel Spadoni said the agency is trying to determine the source of the gas.
He said there’s no information that the methane is affecting the creek’s aquatic life or accumulating in homes.
The initial report of well bubbling came in mid-May.
That home is about a half-mile from a drilling site owned by ExxonMobil subsidiary XTO Energy of Fort Worth, Texas.
The company voluntarily halted drilling operations in the county and is cooperating with the DEP.
Poll: Pa. voters strongly back drilling, tax on energy companies
http://www.timesleader.com/news/Poll__Pa__voters_strongly_back_drilling__tax_on_energy_companies_06-15-2011.html
Posted: June 15, 2011
Sixty-three percent support drilling, and 69 percent approve of an extraction tax.
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania voters support natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale by a 2-to-1 margin, according to a new poll that also shows strong backing for an extraction tax on energy companies.
The Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday shows that 63 percent of Pennsylvanians say the economic benefits of drilling outweigh the environmental impacts, while 30 percent express the opposite view.
The poll appears to reflect the prosperity that drilling has brought to economically struggling regions of the state. Drilling firms and related industries added 72,000 jobs between the fourth quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2011 — at an average salary higher than the statewide average, according to the state Labor Department.
Meanwhile, 69 percent told pollsters they support a drilling tax on gas companies, unchanged from an April survey. Pennsylvania remains the largest gas-drilling state without an extraction tax. The state Senate plans to debate a bill as early as next week that would impose an “impact fee” on natural-gas drilling.
“‘Drill, baby, drill,’ is the call from Pennsylvania voters, and ‘tax, baby, tax,’ is the follow-up as voters see natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale as an economic plus more than an environmental negative,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “They also see added taxes on gas drillers as one of the few acceptable ways to help balance the budget.”
Gov. Tom Corbett, who promised in his 2010 campaign not to increase taxes or fees, has said recently he would consider a fee that helps drilling communities cope with the impact.
The Quinnipiac poll also shows that Pennsylvanians’ views of Corbett differ markedly along gender lines as he approaches six months in office.
Pennsylvanians as a whole remain divided over Corbett, with 39 percent approving of the job he’s doing and 38 percent disapproving. The numbers are similar to April’s poll results.
But men and women have much different impressions of Corbett’s performance. Tuesday’s results show 30 percent of female respondents approved, compared with 48 percent of men. The 18-point gap is more than twice the 7-point margin in the April 29 poll.
One family’s life in the gas patch of Bradford County, Pennsylvania
I’ve blogged before about the water contamination linked to natural gas production in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. Companies have been fined for contaminating the water there, both groundwater and creeks, but there continue to be reports of contamination.
Today I spoke on the phone to Jodie Simons, a mom in West Burlington Township. Her story is a very upsetting tale of what is happening to some families living in the gas patch. The first well near Jodie’s home was drilled in 2007. Within six months, five of her horses died. According to Jodie, “The vet could not explain this rash of horse deaths in such a short time period.” In 2008, Jodie was pregnant, went into early labor, and tragically lost her baby. Also that year, a number of pheasants, ducks, chickens, and turkeys on her farm died, and a pig went from around 500 pounds to 100 pounds in a two week period, continually vomiting, and then died. Dozens of animals died; only a few are now left. She consulted multiple veterinarians and none could provide an explanation for the symptoms. Jodie now wonders if these problems were related to water quality.
In 2009, a second well was drilled near the Simons’ home. Jodie reports that it was re-fracked in February, 2011. Shortly thereafter, their tap water turned gray and hazy. After the water changed, both Jodie and her young son began getting severe rashes with oozing blisters. Jodie’s 10-year-old daughter had to be taken to the hospital for torrential nosebleeds that would not stop, nausea and severe headaches. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) tested the water and found very high levels of methane and other contaminants in the water, but said it was safe to drink. Since the Simons family stopped using any of their water, these symptoms have gone away.
Jodie reports that her water still “stinks awfully; it is a scummy, rotten, nasty smell…”
The oil and gas company that owns the nearby wells originally offered to supply the Simons’ with water for only 3 to 6 months – and only if they signed a document stating that the company did not cause any problems. The Simons family declined to sign. In mid-May, the company began providing bottled water, but there is no fresh water coming out of their faucets. Jodie reports that four neighbors also have water contamination.
Thanks to Jodie Simons for sharing her story.
Amy Mall’s Blog: Posted June 10, 2011
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amall/one_familys_life_in_the_gas_pa.html
Stacked Fracking Panel Has Public Meeting Monday in Pennsylvania
http://www.ewg.org/release/stacked-fracking-panel-has-public-meeting-monday-pennsylvania
Monday night, June 13, is your chance to speak up on behalf of America’s drinking water and to help protect your land from damage from oil and gas drilling.
Not content with the appointment of a federal panel heavily biased in its favor, industry backers are pulling out all the stops to dominate the panel’s first public meeting on Monday night in western Pennsylvania.
An industry group called Energy in Depth has sent an email enticing people to attend Monday’s meeting, apparently hoping to draw an audience that is friendly to wide-open drilling. The group is offering to pay for transportation to the event, including “airfare (for older folks, especially… and for heads of landowner groups),” hotels and meals.
As an additional inducement, the group’s email originally offered to provide those who attend the meeting with tickets to the Pittsburgh Pirates/New York Mets game that day, but a spokesman said later that offer had been withdrawn. Could that be because the game is at the same time as the Department of Energy panel’s meeting?
People with legitimate concerns about the potential harm from drilling activity need to show up, too, to counter this blatant effort to pack the hall for the meeting of the Natural Gas Subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board.
Gas and oil drilling is nothing new, but today’s drilling relies more heavily than ever on a controversial method known as hydraulic fracturing, known as “fracking.” Fracking has been associated with drinking water contamination and property damage across the nation, from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. In one incident that polluted a Colorado creek, nearby groundwater was still contaminated with benzene six years later.
The Energy Department set up its advisory board to make recommendations to improve the safety of fracking. The problem is, six of the seven panel members have direct financial ties to the natural gas and oil industry, and there is no one on the panel representing communities that could be harmed by water contamination or other problems caused by fracking.
Environmental Working Group has gone on record requesting that the panel’s chairman John Deutch step down because he has a conflict of interest: He has received nearly $1.5 million as a board member of both Schlumberger Ltd., one of the world’s three largest hydraulic fracturing companies, and Cheniere Energy, Inc., a Texas based company focused on liquefied natural gas.
The Energy Department panel’s first public meeting is scheduled to be held at Washington Jefferson College, 60 South Lincoln Street, in Washington, Penn., from 7 p.m to 9 p.m. on Monday, June 13. Anyone can speak. We hope you’ll attend the hearing to learn more about fracking in your area and to stand up for your right to know.
Click here for more information about the Energy Department meeting, http://www.shalegas.energy.gov/.
Interested in speaking? Here are some key issues.
• Fracking and its effects on Pennsylvania’s land and water are serious matters that should be discussed by everyone in the community.
• Government advisory panels should be fair and balanced.
• John Deutch cannot be impartial and should step down from the panel.
• An impartial person should lead the panel. It should also be expanded to include local people directly affected by oil and gas drilling and also independent experts.
Click here to read more information about this fracking advisory board, http://ewg.org/release/ewg-chair-dept-energy-natural-gas-panel-must-step….
We hope you can attend this public meeting!
Hundreds at Capitol Rally for Action on Marcellus Drilling
http://www.berksmontnews.com/articles/2011/06/08/tri_county_record/news/doc4def7d0c7c9df756950929.txt?viewmode=fullstory
by Pennsylvania Campaign for Clean Water
Largest Rally in Harrisburg Calls for Drilling Moratorium and Environmental Protections
(Harrisburg) – Hundreds of Pennsylvania residents rallied at the State Capitol today protesting the state legislature’s inaction on Marcellus Shale drilling. The coalition of groups holding the rally called it the largest that Harrisburg has seen to date protesting Marcellus Shale gas drilling.
The coalition called for:
1. A moratorium on further drilling in Pennsylvania until a full cumulative impact analysis on gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale is conducted.
2. Improved protections from gas drilling for drinking water supplies and rivers.
3. Ensuring that gas drillers pay their fair share in taxes, and utilizing these funds to restore cuts to the DEP budget.
4. Require full disclosure by gas drillers of all chemicals used.
5. Maintain the moratorium on further leasing of State Forest land for gas drilling.
Groups sponsoring the rally and lobby day included: PA Campaign for Clean Water, Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, PennEnvironment, Gas Truth of Central PA, League of Women Voters of PA, Physicians for Social Responsibility Philadelphia, Marcellus Protest, EARTHWORKS Oil and Gas Accountability Project, Green Party of Philadelphia, Mountain Watershed Association, Responsible Drilling Alliance.
Crystal Stroud, a resident of Towanda, PA, in Bradford County, described her health problems caused by drinking water contaminated with barium and other toxins from nearby gas drilling. “No one is receiving help from our DEP, local, state or federal governments. Our family has become collateral damage! We are just 1 of the 33% failure rate of these gas companies. The failure to keep the residents of Bradford County’s wells contaminant free,” she stated.
Other speakers at the rally included Josh Fox, the creator of the film documentary, GASLAND, and Craig Saunter, a resident of Dimock, PA, where considerable water contamination from drilling has occurred. Also speaking was Jonathan Jeffers, a former worker in Pennsylvania for Bronco Drilling, who described the neglect he saw for health, safety, and the environment while working on gas drilling jobs.
Myron Arnowitt, PA State Director for Clean Water Action, stated, “Drilling has been going on for nearly four years now, but still our state legislature has taken no action to protect residents from harm. Legislators should take note that the crowds in the Capitol calling for action keep getting bigger.” In addition to attending the rally, protesters made over 160 appointments with state representatives and senators, covering almost every corner of the state.
Several legislators attended the rally, many of whom have introduced legislation on the issue. Senator Daylin Leach (D-Montgomery) stated, “We are the only state that doesn’t tax them. 70% of Pennsylvanians understand this and want a tax. Last year and half alone, drillers racked up over 1500 violations. A severance tax will hold the industry accountable and ensure that the people of Pennsylvania are not left footing the bill.”
“The people of Pennsylvania are alarmed at the growing list of pollution incidents at gas drilling sites across the state,” said Jeff Schmidt, Director of the Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter. “They are here today because they know that Pennsylvania’s gas drilling law and regulations don’t provide enough protection for our health or the environment. We don’t need an industry-dominated Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission, whose roll has been to stall the needed reforms. We call on the Pennsylvania General Assembly to immediately enact amendments to our antiquated Oil and Gas Act legislation, such as HB 971, to protect our communities,” he concluded.
“Every day, the gas industry succeeds in making its voice heard, trying to convince us and our decision-makers that Marcellus Shale drilling isn’t the biggest public health and environmental threat to hit Pennsylvania in a generation,” said Erika Staaf with PennEnvironment. “Yet poll after poll tells us that the majority of Pennsylvanians want industry to pay its fair share in taxes and want clean air and clean water. We’re here to make our voices heard and tell our leaders exactly that.”
“The elected officials of Pennsylvania need to listen to the people who live and work here — we need protection from the gas industry’s out of control violations through a statewide drilling permit moratorium,” said Tracy Carluccio, Deputy Director, Delaware Riverkeeper Network.
“Elected officials heard loudly and clearly today that they have a duty to protect communities from the rush to drill,” said Nadia Steinzor, Marcellus Regional Organizer for Earthworks Oil & Gas Accountability Project. “Citizens are simply asking for health and the environment to be given priority over industry profit.”
Republican Pileggi proposes severance tax to help seniors
http://citizensvoice.com/news/drilling/republican-pileggi-proposes-severance-tax-to-help-seniors-1.1156511#axzz1OVCl9M3c
By Robert Swift (Harrisburg Bureau Chief)
Published: June 3, 2011
HARRISBURG – A Senate Republican leader wants to levy a state Marcellus Shale severance tax as a way to pay for a freeze on school property taxes for senior citizens.
Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Chester, sent a memo to colleagues seeking support for a “reasonable and competitive” severance tax to generate about $250 million annually for tax relief targeted for individuals 65 and older who have qualified for a homestead exemption for at least five years.
“The tax burden would be shifted from seniors, many of whom are struggling to stay in their homes on a fixed income, to companies involved in natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania,” said Pileggi.
Pileggi has yet to introduce his bill. The senator said the tax will be based on an as of yet unspecified fixed rate applied to both the volume and price of gas.
He considers the proposal revenue neutral since all severance tax revenue would go to a dedicated fund to reimburse school districts for revenue lost due to the tax freeze.
This is a telling point in light of a flap over whether the drilling impact fee legislation sponsored by Pileggi’s colleague, Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati, R-Jefferson County, is a tax increase or not.
Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, wrote to senators last week saying the impact fee bill is a tax increase. As a result, he said, any state lawmaker who signed ATR’s anti-tax hike pledge would be violating that pledge if they voted for the impact fee bill.
The ATR pledge contains a provision that a tax increase is acceptable if directly offset by a tax cut of equal size so it becomes revenue neutral. Scarnati countered that his impact fee bill doesn’t increase taxes and will be offset anyway by several state business tax cuts.
Pileggi said he supports Scarnati’s plan to use impact fee revenue to cover the costs of the impact of gas drilling on the environment and local governments.
Another GOP lawmaker, Rep. Nick Miccarelli, R-Ridley Park, said this week he will introduce a severance tax bill to pay for a cut in the state personal income tax.
Pileggi is the most prominent GOP lawmaker yet to call for a severance tax, but Republican Gov. Tom Corbett is steadfast in opposition to the idea. These new severance tax bills are an attempt to give political cover to state lawmakers who signed the ATR pledge, said Jan Jarrett, president of PennFuture, an environmental group. Jarrett said the bills help advance the debate over a severance tax, but won’t get her group’s support because they don’t help the environment and local communities.
“You really need to structure a tax in a way to address the extra costs that drilling imposes on the environment and communities,” she added.
DEP suggests stronger drilling rules are needed
http://online.wsj.com/article/APda6b059295ad44818b60955e3e981cef.html
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration is recommending tougher laws to protect drinking water from pollution caused by booming natural gas exploration in Pennsylvania and to allow the state to wield harsher penalties against drilling companies that violate the law.
Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer made the recommendations in a letter sent Friday to Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley, who chairs the governor’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission.
One recommendation would restrict well drilling within 1,000 feet of a public water supply. Currently, the law requires as little as 100 feet in many cases. Another would clarify the DEP’s authority to revoke or refuse to issue a drilling permit under certain conditions, and allow it to require comprehensive tracking of drilling wastewater that would help the agency more accurately determine wastewater recycling rates.
Krancer also recommended expanding buffer requirements between gas wells and private drinking water wells from 200 feet to 500 feet; boosting per-day penalties for violating the law and well-plugging insurance requirements; and extending a driller’s presumptive liability for pollution or water loss from 1,000 feet to 2,500 feet from a gas well.
Many of those recommendations, if not all, have been under consideration in the Legislature since last year, with little action. Some of the bills would provide for stronger protections than the Corbett administration advocates.
The Marcellus Shale formation, which is considered the nation’s largest-known natural gas reservoir, lies primarily beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio. Pennsylvania is the center of activity, with more than 3,000 wells drilled in the past three years and thousands more planned in the coming years as thick shale emerges as an affordable, plentiful and profitable source of natural gas.
When drilling companies began flocking to Pennsylvania several years ago to exploit the Marcellus Shale formation, they were largely working under laws from the 1980s that never envisioned deep-drilling activity that is combined with high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and the recent innovation of horizontal drilling underground.
So far, the Legislature has done little to change that, other than pass a bill to require faster public disclosure of well-by-well gas production data from Marcellus Shale wells and debate the merits of a tax on gas extraction.
Pennsylvania remains the largest gas-drilling state without such a tax and Corbett opposes the imposition of one.
For decades, energy companies have drilled shallow oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania. But high-volume fracking involves the use of chemicals and produces millions of gallons of often-toxic wastewater, sparking fresh environmental concerns about the protection of public waterways and wells that provide drinking water to millions of people.
Last year, the Department of Environmental Protection won approval of tougher regulations on drilling safety, chemical disclosure and wastewater disposal and, before that, regulatory approval to increase permit fees so that it could pay the salaries of more inspectors and permitting staff.
But Pennsylvania has left a number of protections undone, some lawmakers say.
For instance, Pennsylvania’s $1,000 per day penalty on drillers for violating state regulations lag many other states. The $25,000 per-company insurance bond that the state requires to plug abandoned wells is out of date, as well, since plugging a single well can cost as much as $100,000.
In April, the DEP asked drilling companies to voluntarily stop taking the wastewater to riverside treatment plants that were ill-equipped to remove all the pollutants from it. The agency has not said whether the companies are complying with the May 19 deadline.
___
Information from: The Times-Tribune, http://thetimes-tribune.com/
Fracking review ordered
http://www.timesleader.com/news/Fracking_review_ordered_05-29-2011.html
Posted: May 29
MICHAEL GORMLEY
NY Governor issues memo following Pa. accident
ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has ordered an expanded environmental review of proposed “hydrofracking” for natural gas in New York after an accident in Pennsylvania caused a well to gush salty, chemically-tainted water for two days.
An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press directs the state Department of Environmental Conservation to review and learn any lessons from the April mishap in Pennsylvania’s Bradford County.
The memo dated Friday said the “blowout” raised issues about the controversial technology that need to be evaluated before New York decides whether to allow a major expansion of the potentially lucrative gas-extraction method, which has been assailed by some environmentalists as unsafe.
The memo was from Cuomo’s director of state operations, Howard Glaser, to Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joseph Martens, a Cuomo appointee.
The April 19 accident in Pennsylvania briefly caused a handful of families living near the well to flee their homes as thousands of gallons of brine flooded across farm fields and entered a stream. Well cappers from Houston had to pump ground-up tires, plastic bits and other rubber material into the well to temporarily seal it.
Well operator Chesapeake Energy said the environmental damage from the spill was minimal, but temporarily suspended operations to investigate what went wrong.
New York’s review will include an on-site inspection by New York officials.
The findings will be part of New York’s environmental evaluation of using hydraulic fracturing to release natural gas from the Marcellus Shale deposit through much of New York’s Southern Tier. The final report is due July 1.
The gas drilling boom has been an economic engine in Pennsylvania, but it has been delayed in New York for the past three years as environmental groups have assailed hydraulic fracturing as a potential hazard to drinking water.
“Fracking” involves shooting huge volumes of water, laced with much smaller amounts of chemicals and sand, thousands of feet underground to release trapped gas. Some of the water then returns to the surface, tainted by substances like barium and salt that it picks up underground. By law, this wastewater must be disposed of deep containment wells or treated before it is released back into the environment.
Industry groups say the process is well regulated and safe.
The Independent Oil & Gas Association of New York had asked Cuomo to expedite the state’s review of fracking and allow permitting for gas exploration to proceed.
Could Smog Shroud the Marcellus Shale’s Natural Gas Boom?
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/05/27/27greenwire-could-smog-shroud-the-marcellus-shales-natural-3397.html
By GABRIEL NELSON of Greenwire
Published: May 27, 2011
Since returning to private life, John Hanger, the former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, has kept busy trying to douse fears that his state’s natural gas boom is contaminating drinking water.
Hanger’s two-year tenure saw the Marcellus Shale, an underground rock formation that runs beneath much of the Northeast, change from a geological oddity into the center of a American drilling renaissance. Under his watch, Pennsylvania scrambled to respond to claims that water supplies are being tainted by the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which a blend of water, sand and chemicals is injected underground to break the shale and release the gas inside.
Hanger, a Democrat who previously led the Pennsylvania-based environmental group PennFuture, left office convinced that the high-profile fracas over fracking is misguided.
Air pollution is more of an Achilles’ heel for drilling in the Northeast, he said last week, pointing to spikes in emissions that have followed natural gas development in other parts of the country.
Thousands of natural gas wells are expected to be drilled in Pennsylvania over the next few years, requiring a fleet of construction equipment, diesel engines and compressor stations. Together, they could be a large new source of smog-forming emissions along the Northeast corridor, much of which still struggles with old air quality standards at a time when U.S. EPA is preparing to make the rules stricter.
Read more