Corbett Official Wants To See More Drilling In State Forests

Sierra Club Response To DCED Sec­re­tary Walker’s Com­ments About Unlim­ited State For­est Gas Leasing

Today we learned that Alan Walker, Sec­re­tary of the Depart­ment of Com­mu­nity and Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment (DCED) says open­ing up the remain­ing publicly-owned state forests to gas drilling will solve all the Commonwealth’s eco­nomic prob­lems. In an arti­cle by Peter DeCoursey, pub­lished in Capi­tol­wire, Walker claims that leas­ing gas on our remain­ing state forests could gen­er­ate $60 bil­lion in state rev­enue over the next 30 years. This is sig­nif­i­cantly more rev­enue than even the most opti­mistic indus­try pro­jec­tions. Walker also claims in the arti­cle that there would be min­i­mal impact on the forests, which would be reveg­e­tated in “a cou­ple years”. This is not con­sis­tent with the legacy of aban­doned wells and unveg­e­tated land from gas drilling in the Com­mon­wealth. In addi­tion, Gas pipelines, roads, and com­pres­sor sta­tions will all remain as long as gas is being pro­duced and inevitably have an impact.

Cur­rently, nearly 700,000 acres of state forests are avail­able for gas drilling. In 2010, Gov­er­nor Ren­dell signed an Exec­u­tive Order estab­lish­ing a mora­to­rium on addi­tional state for­est gas leas­ing. DCNR has stud­ied the issue and con­firmed that no addi­tional state forests lands can be leased for gas drilling with­out unac­cept­able envi­ron­men­tal harm.
Sierra Club Penn­syl­va­nia Chap­ter Direc­tor responded to Walker’s com­ments: “Clearly, Sec­re­tary Walker does not acknowl­edge the harm­ful impacts of gas drilling in our forests. We have seen first hand the effects of indus­tri­al­iza­tion of our forests: clear-cutting, water and air pol­lu­tion, wildlife habi­tat frag­men­ta­tion, the destruc­tion of for­est roads by the mas­sive trucks. Already, tourists, hunters, and fish­er­men are aban­don­ing our state forests and parks in drilling coun­try, choos­ing more pris­tine areas, such as in New York where drilling on pub­lic lands is banned.”

“We call on Gov­er­nor Cor­bett to main­tain the cur­rent mora­to­rium on addi­tional state for­est gas leas­ing,” Schmidt con­tin­ued. “We also call on DCNR Sec­re­tary Allan to pub­licly state whether he agrees with Sec­re­tary Walker’s com­ments. We need to know if Sec­re­tary Walker is now mak­ing land man­age­ment pol­icy for our state’s pub­lic lands man­age­ment agency. We believe that land man­age­ment deci­sions should be made by trained pro­fes­sion­als with sci­en­tific stud­ies, not through ill-informed per­sonal opinions.”

Lease ALL the land and become the Alaska of the lower 48 states. Accord­ing to a study two years ago if we leased all the PA state for­est lands and picked up the state min­i­mum roy­alty from the gas pro­duc­tion we could elim­i­nate the state income tax and send div­i­dend dis­tri­b­u­tion checks to every resident.

A friend leased her 150 acres last year and got $2,000 per acre ($300k) and 1/8th roy­alty. With all the money she’s mak­ing she is not com­plain­ing about the tem­po­rary road con­ges­tion or the tem­po­rary road put onto her prop­erty. Her water is fine, her neigh­bors finally have jobs, and her town is thriv­ing. Is there a prob­lem here?

So why are we putting patently false envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns in front of eco­nomic activ­ity in a state that is strug­gling financially?