Everybody’s Talkin’ At Me: Reaction To Commission Report Pours In

July 22, 2011 | 3:46 PM

By Scott Detrow

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Reac­tions to Gov­er­nor Corbett’s Mar­cel­lus Shale Advi­sory Com­mis­sion report have been flood­ing the StateIm­pact inbox all day. Read on for the high­lights of com­ments from the Mar­cel­lus Shale Coali­tion, County Com­mis­sion­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, Penn­syl­va­nia Bud­get and Pol­icy Cen­ter, Pen­n­Fu­ture, the Chesa­peake Bay Foun­da­tion, Penn­syl­va­nia State Asso­ci­a­tion of Town­ship Super­vi­sors, and Penn­syl­va­nia Envi­ron­men­tal Council.

(Want your group’s com­ment on here? Email me at sde­trow (at) stateimpact.org.)

Mar­cel­lus Shale Coali­tion (Kathryn Klaber, president)

“The Mar­cel­lus Shale Coali­tion stands ready to work with the reg­u­la­tory com­mu­nity and Gen­eral Assem­bly on mod­ern­iz­ing Pennsylvania’s laws and reg­u­la­tions to fur­ther the respon­si­ble devel­op­ment of the Mar­cel­lus Shale. As an indus­try of engi­neers and sci­en­tists, who solve com­plex chal­lenges and seek to inno­vate by the day, we con­tinue to demon­strate our abil­ity to rapidly develop new solu­tions, tech­nolo­gies and best prac­tices to enhance Mar­cel­lus pro­duc­tion. From water reuse and recy­cling prac­tices to meet­ing DEP’s guid­ance on sur­face dis­posal, our track record is proven.”

Penn­syl­va­nia State Asso­ci­a­tion of Town­ship Supervisors

The Penn­syl­va­nia State Asso­ci­a­tion of Town­ship Super­vi­sors has been ask­ing law­mak­ers to impose an impact fee on nat­ural gas drillers and deliver much of the rev­enue to munic­i­pal­i­ties deal­ing with the side effects of the grow­ing industry.

In recent weeks, the Asso­ci­a­tion has also urged Har­ris­burg to keep land use deci­sion mak­ing where it belongs: at the local level.

Now, it’s one step closer to those goals.

On Fri­day, the state’s Mar­cel­lus Shale Advi­sory Com­mis­sion, a group of 30 gov­ern­ment and nat­ural gas indus­try lead­ers, deliv­ered its final report to Gov. Tom Cor­bett. Among the 96 rec­om­men­da­tions, the com­mis­sion unan­i­mously sup­ported an impact fee, say­ing that it would help com­mu­ni­ties on the front lines cover the costs of roads and bridges, emer­gency response, fire and police pro­tec­tion, pub­lic water and sewer sys­tems, nat­ural resource over­sight, and per­mit review and enforce­ment, to name a few.

The com­mis­sion also agreed that the state should main­tain local land use con­trols that are rea­son­able and based on commonsense.

County Com­mis­sion­ers Asso­ci­a­tion of Penn­syl­va­nia (Doug Hill, Exec­u­tive Director)

Har­ris­burg, PA – The County Com­mis­sion­ers Asso­ci­a­tion of Penn­syl­va­nia (CCAP) appre­ci­ates the work in which the Mar­cel­lus Shale Advi­sory Com­mis­sion has engaged the past few months to address issues related to Mar­cel­lus Shale drilling. The Com­mis­sion and its sub­com­mit­tees offered numer­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties for input about the con­cerns coun­ties have with Mar­cel­lus Shale drilling and the impacts fac­ing local com­mu­ni­ties where drilling is tak­ing place.

The Commission’s report appro­pri­ately rec­og­nizes the broad diver­sity of these impacts, includ­ing infra­struc­ture, health and human ser­vices, envi­ron­men­tal impacts, hous­ing, crim­i­nal jus­tice, pub­lic safety, landowner con­cerns and emer­gency man­age­ment. In addi­tion, the Com­mis­sion rec­om­mends an impact fee based on its find­ing that many of these impacts are uncom­pen­sated. This is con­sis­tent with the Association’s pol­icy posi­tion to seek rev­enues from restora­tion of prop­erty tax assess­abil­ity of nat­ural gas (lost to a Penn­syl­va­nia Supreme Court deci­sion in 2002), or through a sev­er­ance tax or an impact fee, to mit­i­gate the bur­den on local prop­erty tax­pay­ers for increases in county ser­vices and expen­di­tures gen­er­ated by indus­try activities.

The Asso­ci­a­tion also appre­ci­ates rec­om­men­da­tions that address two of CCAP’s 2011 leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties regard­ing pipeline safety and emer­gency pre­pared­ness in addi­tion to con­ser­va­tion dis­trict involve­ment in ero­sion and sed­i­men­ta­tion per­mit­ting. These rec­om­men­da­tions rec­og­nize coun­ties’ com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing pub­lic and envi­ron­men­tal safety, and that cer­tain tools will help coun­ties assure local resource issues and com­mu­nity objec­tives are prioritized.

Penn­syl­va­nia Bud­get and Pol­icy Center

“We are dis­ap­pointed by today’s report. The com­mis­sion has missed a golden oppor­tu­nity to look at the broad impacts of Mar­cel­lus Shale drilling — both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive. Instead, it has made rec­om­men­da­tions that read like an indus­try wish list.

“The com­mis­sion favors a local impact fee on drilling but lim­its its scope to demon­strated impacts. No other state struc­tures it drilling tax or fee that way. It would be an admin­is­tra­tive bur­den for many local gov­ern­ments in Penn­syl­va­nia, espe­cially those in less pop­u­lous coun­ties.
“The com­mis­sion also misses a real oppor­tu­nity to con­sider how the state can sup­port Mar­cel­lus Shale drilling in a way that boosts other indus­tries, like steel, con­crete and the ser­vice indus­tries. Instead, it asks tax­pay­ers to pay for incen­tives to cre­ate new mar­kets for nat­ural gas. This should not be the tax­pay­ers’ respon­si­bil­ity.
“Finally, this report fails to hon­estly address the broader statewide impacts from drilling, includ­ing air qual­ity, water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, soci­etal impacts and habi­tat dis­rup­tion. With­out this dis­cus­sion, the report is incomplete.”

Pen­n­Fu­ture (John Quigley – advi­sor; for­mer DCNR secretary)

The Governor’s Mar­cel­lus Shale Advi­sory Com­mis­sion (MSAC) has issued its long-awaited report. It is required read­ing for every Pennsylvanian.

The report con­tains rec­om­men­da­tions with which I agree – like the addi­tional reg­u­la­tory con­cepts out­lined — and some with which I strongly dis­agree – like includ­ing nat­ural gas as a Tier 2-eligible fuel under the state’s Alter­na­tive Energy Port­fo­lio Standard.

But here I want to focus on sev­eral of the Commission’s rec­om­men­da­tions that relate to the work of the Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion and Nat­ural Resources (DCNR).

At first glance, it looks like those DCNR-related rec­om­men­da­tions are spot-on.

MSAC points out that DCNR has devel­oped a set of best man­age­ment prac­tices­that gov­ern gas drilling on state for­est land. DCNR devel­oped them in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the gas indus­try and stake­hold­ers. As I wrote here, the BMPs are great work – and great lead­er­ship — by DCNR Sec­re­tary Richard Allan and the women and men of DCNR.

I also wrote that I hoped that those guide­lines will be applied not only on the pub­lic lands, but across the state.

The MSAC thinks so, too.

“DCNR has devel­oped a set of best man­age­ment prac­tices for use on state forest­land that are also applic­a­ble for pri­vate lands.” (p. 76)

MSAC goes fur­ther, rec­om­mend­ing that:

“DEP and DCNR – along with indus­try – should con­tin­u­ally review and exam­ine the range of best man­age­ment prac­tices uti­lized dur­ing con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion of the well site, and con­sider incor­po­rat­ing these types of prac­tices into reg­u­la­tory and oper­a­tor guid­ance.” (p. 109)

Yes. .…

Chesa­peake Bay Foundation

“The final report of the Com­mis­sion, released today, fea­tures key envi­ron­men­tal rec­om­men­da­tions, as sub­mit­ted col­lab­o­ra­tively by the four envi­ron­men­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the Com­mis­sion. If imple­mented, these rec­om­men­da­tions will lead to height­ened pro­tec­tion of our water­ways and drink­ing water.”

Some of those key rec­om­men­da­tions include:

• Pro­vid­ing for sub­stan­tial improve­ments in Ero­sion and Sed­i­ment Con­trol and Per­mit­ting. While oil and gas well sites have the poten­tial to send large vol­umes of sed­i­ment into our streams and rivers, sites less than five acres are not per­mit­ted with the same scrutiny as other sim­i­lar con­struc­tion sites.   Enforc­ing the same stan­dards for the oil and gas indus­try as tra­di­tional con­struc­tion sites will lessen the envi­ron­men­tal threats of excess pol­lu­tion in our waterways.
• Bring­ing the County Con­ser­va­tion Dis­tricts back into the per­mit­ting and over­sight process. County con­ser­va­tion dis­tricts ful­fill the valu­able role of pro­vid­ing in-the-field, hands-on infor­ma­tion about local envi­ron­men­tal issues. Re-establishing their role in the process will help guide the plan­ning, per­mit review, and inspec­tion of drilling related activ­i­ties in the region.
• Key set­back pro­vi­sions to pro­tect our homes, drink­ing water wells, water­ways, and environmentally-sensitive areas. To bet­ter pro­tect water resources, the rec­om­men­da­tions call for amend­ing the PA Oil & Gas Act to increase the min­i­mum set­back dis­tance of a well pad from a spring, stream, or water body from 100 feet to 300 feet; increased to 500 feet if water­way was des­ig­nated as either High Qual­ity or Excep­tional Value. This will pro­tect our water­ways from the obvi­ous encroach­ment of a well pad operation.

“Despite these, and many other sig­nif­i­cant envi­ron­men­tal rec­om­men­da­tions being included in the report, there are still envi­ron­men­tal issues that remain to be addressed to our sat­is­fac­tion, includ­ing a sev­er­ance tax or impact fee, and address­ing future impacts to state for­est lands.  CBF will con­tinue to focus on these issues, as well as the need for a cumu­la­tive impact study to bet­ter under­stand the long-term impacts drilling has on our nat­ural resources.”

Penn­syl­va­nia Envi­ron­men­tal Council

…Now it’s time to act.  And act fast.

We’ve been dis­cussing and debat­ing Mar­cel­lus Shale leg­is­la­tion and reg­u­la­tions for more than two years.  And with each pass­ing day, the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion approves per­mit appli­ca­tions for new wells to be drilled some­where in Penn­syl­va­nia.  The peo­ple of Penn­syl­va­nia have waited patiently for their elected offi­cials to lead on this issue.  While PEC does not sup­port every rec­om­men­da­tion in the Com­mis­sion Report, there are a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of rec­om­men­da­tions that did achieve con­sen­sus and which deserve imme­di­ate attention.

With this con­sen­sus among indus­try and envi­ron­men­tal com­mu­nity inter­ests, as well as the DEP, on how to bet­ter reg­u­late Pennsylvania’s Mar­cel­lus Shale gas indus­try, the time has come for the Gov­er­nor and leg­is­la­ture to put this plan into action.

The Penn­syl­va­nia Envi­ron­men­tal Coun­cil calls on Gov­er­nor Cor­bett to request a spe­cial ses­sion of the Gen­eral Assem­bly for the express pur­pose of enact­ing leg­is­la­tion that will gov­ern the devel­op­ment of nat­ural gas from Penn­syl­va­nia Mar­cel­lus Shale.

Specif­i­cally, we believe this leg­is­la­tion should amend the Penn­syl­va­nia Oil & Gas Act as follows:

• Incor­po­rate all applic­a­ble envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion rec­om­men­da­tions out­lined in the Mar­cel­lus Shale Advi­sory Commission’s report.

• Expand the per­mit­ting process to allow for the option of regional com­pre­hen­sive plan­ning, in advance of indi­vid­ual site approvals, as a means to reduce sur­face and cumu­la­tive impacts of regional importance.

• Give DEP the author­ity to deny per­mits based on impacts to pub­lic resources; and expand the list of pub­lic resources to include addi­tional sen­si­tive eco­log­i­cal areas such as des­ig­nated high qual­ity or excep­tional value waters.

• Ensure that DEP has suf­fi­cient author­ity to quickly adapt poli­cies and con­trols in response to new tech­nolo­gies or infor­ma­tion that are still unknown.

While the Mar­cel­lus Shale Advi­sory Com­mis­sion report touches upon issues that go beyond the purview of the Oil & Gas Act and in them­selves require imme­di­ate atten­tion, we believe it is now clear that mean­ing­ful and effec­tive leg­isla­tive updates to the Act can be accom­plished quickly this fall. The path has been made clear – we must act now.