Pennsylvania

Energy. Environment. Economy.

Skunk At the Garden Party: Rendell Delivers Harsh Message During Shale Conference Speech

September 7, 2011 | 7:09 PM
By Scott Detrow

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For­mer Gov­er­nor Ed Ren­dell at a less con­fronta­tional event this year

Those anti-drilling pro­tes­tors finally found some­one inside the Penn­syl­va­nia Con­ven­tion Cen­ter who had their back: for­mer Demo­c­ra­tic Gov­er­nor Ed Rendell.

After a day filled with speak­ers who dis­missed or mocked their con­cerns – for­mer Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Tom Ridge called it “phony hys­te­ria,” and Chesa­peake Energy CEO Aubrey McClen­don essen­tially labeled them lud­dites – Ren­dell took the stage and told the room that “frac­tivists” had a point. “The things they’re talk­ing about are not incor­rect,” he said. “They’re rais­ing seri­ous and legit­i­mate issues. They express the fears of not just a few mil­i­tants, but the fears of a lot of good, hard-working Penn­syl­va­ni­ans. About what’s going to hap­pen to their neigh­bor­hood. About what’s going to hap­pen to their water sup­ply. About what’s going to hap­pen to their water­ways. Those are things that we can’t con­tinue to ignore.”

Ren­dell then pro­ceeded to lec­ture the energy indus­try for twenty minutes.

He argued drilling com­pa­nies have hurt their pub­lic image by oppos­ing a sev­er­ance tax on gas extrac­tion, and by not tak­ing enough steps to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment. “Peo­ple care about the air they breathe. They care about the water that they drink. They care about the water­ways that they fish in, and they swim in,” he said. “And that’s true whether it’s in Tioga County, or the Delaware River Basin. Peo­ple care very much. And the indus­try has not made the nec­es­sary invest­ments to ensure a safe environment.”

He pointed to hun­dreds of Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion vio­la­tions racked up by drillers in recent months. “These vio­la­tions, and this record of seem­ing care­less­ness about vio­la­tions and about envi­ron­men­tal secu­rity have cre­ated a bipar­ti­san coali­tion that cuts across party lines, that cuts across geo­graphic lines against shale drilling,” he said.

Josh Fox speaks dur­ing an anti-drilling rally

The Mar­cel­lus Shale Coali­tion – the hosts of the gar­den party that Ren­dell skunked all over, that is – dis­puted his argu­ment. In a state­ment, pres­i­dent Kathryn Klaber said, “Penn­syl­va­nia nat­ural gas devel­op­ment is dynamic, fast-moving, and strictly-regulated, and the for­mer Governor’s attempts to rehash issues that have since been resolved is stale and out­dated.  As the for­mer gov­er­nor has noted [ and here she linked to a New York Times op-ed he authored in March] Penn­syl­va­nia has the strongest enforce­ment pro­gram of any state with gas drilling.  Period.’  We agree.”

Ren­dell also harangued the indus­try for not sup­port­ing a sev­er­ance tax on gas drilling, call­ing the com­pa­nies’ refusal to embrace a levy “a great dis­ap­point­ment.” He argued it’s hurt­ing their pub­lic image. “The fact that the shale com­pa­nies do not pay a sev­er­ance tax has become well-known by vir­tu­ally every advo­cacy group in the com­mon­wealth,” he said. “And it is the whip­ping boy for those groups.” By balk­ing at a tax at a time when law­mak­ers are cut­ting bil­lions of dol­lars from the bud­gets, Ren­dell said drillers are, “turn­ing the tide of pub­lic opin­ion against [them].”

Ren­dell sup­ported a sev­er­ance tax dur­ing his admin­is­tra­tion, but took the issue off the table dur­ing 2009 bud­get nego­ti­a­tions, when it was gain­ing momen­tum. Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Tom Cor­bett has called the issue a non-starter, mak­ing it a polit­i­cal long­shot in Har­ris­burg these days. The most real­is­tic levy pos­si­ble is likely a low-level impact fee, which would drive money to local gov­ern­ments host­ing drilling rigs, and pos­si­bly to a hand­ful of envi­ron­men­tal cleanup efforts.

We’ve now heard from two of the three for­mer gov­er­nors slated to speak at the Shale Gas Insight con­fer­ence. Both Ren­dell and Ridge made their own bold argu­ments. Will Cor­bett con­tinue the trend?

Comments

  • Marty

    The only per­son Fast Eddy should be lec­tur­ing is his cell­mate. He should be locked up for all the money he stole from the state for him­self and his friends.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_P5OLS3ADXQZWEQVIGIZ7EEPEGY Sharon

    Why is any­one lis­ten­ing to Fat Eddie? This is the man, who in 8 years, damn near bank­rupted the state while pay­ing off his cronies. He either needs to go away qui­etly or face charges of corruption.

  • Anony­mous

    Why in Heaven’s name was a skunk invited to the party?
    Why give him the air-time?
    NON-SENSE.

  • Cit­i­zenKane

    What has Cor­bett done for the Com­mon­wealth? Let’s see, he has taken hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars from the gas drillers and refused to impose any kind of extrac­tion tax– taxes that would helped save our edu­ca­tion sys­tem and improve our infra­struc­ture. Instead, Cor­bett has slashed edu­ca­tion and offered no solu­tions to fix­ing our fail­ing roads, water and sewer sys­tems. Penn­syl­va­nia is now on the path to eco­nomic ruin. Our pop­u­la­tion will be poorly edu­cated and we will have no viable trans­porta­tion sys­tem or other infra­struc­ture. No busi­nesses will want to locate here. Our future looks bleak under the present plan of action. I think Ren­dell sounds like a much wiser Gov­er­nor than our cur­rent guy.

    • Anony­mous

      Oh please, give us all a break. First off, PA busi­nesses pay some of the high­est taxes (that’s why most won’t locate here, along with hav­ing to deal with strong union oppo­si­tion) in the nation so these gas com­pa­nies are pay­ing their share. As far as the edu­ca­tion sys­tem, the edu­ca­tors are tak­ing us all to the clean­ers with their unions and retire­ment require­ments. We have been on the road to eco­nomic ruin for some time because of pub­lic employ­ees numbers/demands. Now for my other view­point. The shale indus­try is mak­ing mis­takes and more strin­gent laws are needed. They do pol­lute air, ground, and water. They claim the act of frack­ing doesn’t pol­lute but acci­dents hap­pen and more strin­gent laws need to be passed con­cern­ing frac pits and frack­ing water, in gen­eral. As it is, the EPA and DEP have removed mostly all con­trols from local gov­ern­ment so we must depend on the actions of “big gov­ern­ment.” I say get mov­ing, big gov­ern­ment, much is at stake in our state.

  • Anony­mous

    The con­cerns Mr Ren­dell echoed are real. I am sad to see the com­ments below that stoop to name call­ing. The gas indus­try has the money and the polit­i­cal con­nec­tions to stiff arm pub­lic debate, over­whelm the media (unfor­tu­nately even News­works) with pub­lic rela­tions state­ments, con­trol our polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions, and basi­cally get vir­tu­ally every­thing they want. It is not healthy for our state, not healthy for our envi­ron­ment, and not healthy for us to have this huge, pow­er­ful indus­try dom­i­nate our insti­tu­tions with so few bound­aries and so lit­tle account­abil­ity.
    That some folks hate Mr. Ren­dell and call him names or snipe about him does not say any­thing at all about the truth or false­hood of his state­ments.
    That the gas indus­try held a huge con­fer­ence where there was vir­tu­ally no dis­agree­ment and no mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion tells me that they do not really care to dis­cover the real truth or be held account­able for the adverse impacts of their behav­ior. In the end, once again, it seems to be all about money and not about safety no mat­ter how many times the indus­try spokes­peo­ple say it is safe.

    • Marty

      It is not the mes­sage, it is the mes­sen­ger. Fast Eddy is a thief who left the state hold­ing the bag. His high­point was when he stole the Barnes Foun­da­tion $25 Bil­lion in art­work to pay off Lenfest and Pew for past favors. You don’t invite a cor­rupt hack to speak on how a vital indus­try should be reg­u­lated when his only inter­est is in what he can extract in polit­i­cal contributions.

      • Anony­mous

        Not sure which cor­po­ra­tion will give Ed Ren­dell polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions for rais­ing crit­i­cal ques­tions about gas drilling. Hmmm, per­haps Green Peace, but I think their gifts would be way smaller than Range Resources. So the evi­dence does not sup­port your con­tention. If any­one cares to com­ment on the con­tent rather than the atmos­pher­ics I would be inter­ested. All over the inter­net, about shale gas, deep sea drilling, the tar sands, and moun­tain top removal, there seems to be an infi­nite amount of peo­ple who are will­ing to call names, attack those who raise legit­i­mate ques­tions, make alarmist (and unfounded) com­ments about liv­ing in caves and eat­ing berries. But no one wants to defend the prac­tice on sci­en­tific grounds or explain why it makes sense to bur­den our great grand­chil­dren with a world bespoiled.

        More com­ments about how you hate Ed Ren­dell are sim­ply not relevant.

      • Anony­mous

        Would you like to com­ment on the polit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions that Mr. Cor­bett will be get­ting out of all this? How does that affect your appre­ci­a­tion for him as a politician?

  • Anony­mous

    Eddy needs to take a hike. Prefer­ably to another state. He set the state up for a $4 bil­lion deficit using the failed stim­u­lus money from Obama in a way that the state would have had to con­tinue to fund if Cor­bett had not made the cuts he did.

    The state stands to gain a lot of money from the gas indus­try whether there is a gas tax or not.

  • Anony­mous

    We need more democ­rats. That’s the point.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1503817183 Briget Shields

    The fright­en­ing part of this story for me is that there wasn’t much sub­stance to the con­fer­ence other than name call­ing and prof­its. The seri­ous issues of water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, health issues for the peo­ple liv­ing near the drilling, con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of land and air, acci­dents (many fatal) both to the envi­ron­ment and work­ers is not impor­tant enough to the peo­ple in the room to have even been addressed. If it was, I think that the CEO’s and politi­cians would be engaged in intel­li­gent dis­cus­sion on how to pre­vent much of this irre­versible dam­age rather than name call­ing and arro­gant judge­ments against those who do care. I was there, I saw and heard first hand some of the most hor­rific sto­ries. Reports of a total lack off moral val­ues, com­pas­sion, respect or care given to the peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing. There is some very seri­ous dam­age being done where ever this indus­try is doing busi­ness. if this wasn’t about greed than I would expect to hear some intel­li­gent dis­cus­sion on how to fix and avoid this dam­age. Now I am almost cer­tain that the rea­son for not con­fronting the issues is a sign that these IMPORTANT issues are not and never will be addressed or fixed. It is astound­ing to me that these men would want to leave a legacy of death, destruc­tion and irre­versible dam­age for the future of many gen­er­a­tions that will come after us.

  • Bonita_e_jones

    Rose Ruhl, a cit­i­zen of PA Face­booked this piece a lit­tle while ago. She also posted this com­ment.… ” I saw on the weather chan­nel last night that Jim Can­tore was stand­ing on a bridge over the Susque­hanna River in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. and a strong odor of gas or diesel fuel was com­ing from the river. This morn­ing a news reporter was in Mari­etta, Pa. which is in Lan­caster county and that reporter was get­ting a strong gas odor from the river also. The gas wells up north are under water in places and toxic frack ponds have spillled over. These gas­holes are killing our state!!!! AND the state gov­ern­ment is look­ing the other way!!!! Time to speak up peo­ple!!!! That is our drink­ing water!!!

    Just think of it, “frack­ing,” … 600 chem­i­cals plus water and sil­ica sand pres­sure dri­ven down into geo­log­i­cal rock to frac­ture the rock and draw the gas up and out.… you see all the warm and fuzzy ads fm Exxon/Mobil w/black/white film of a guy named Eric Oswald, a dim­ple faced smil­ing engi­neer for E/M assur­ing that they are doing this “right.” All the pro­pa­ganda about going a mile or down in con­crete encased pipe or tub­ing etc. Well the gas wells noted above are under water and frack ponds of waste spilled over. What is the mat­ter with you peo­ple. I get the Big Ed Ren­dell sar­casm. And now he’s mak­ing money being a pol con­sul­tant for MSNBC bec Chris Matthews loves him. But as another poster said, the issue is this awful destruc­tion of land, water and air. And don’t even get me started on Key­stone XL II.… but on the other hand.… if the sys­tem will let this work I’m copy­ing in this video… I’m in Maine retired a yr or so now and get the CBC (Cana­dian) chan­nel… http://vimeo.com/27902739

  • Bonita_e_jones

    Brid­get I cldn’t have said it bet­ter. Every­one, make sure you see this video .… tarsands is com­ing if Obama signs off on it. As for­mer NASA weather expert said.… “it is game over for the envi­ron­ment if Key­stone XL II goes thru.” http://vimeo.com/27902739

  • Bonita_e_jones
  • Bonita_e_jones
  • Bonita_e_jones

    Brid­get I cldn’t have said it bet­ter. Every­one, make sure you see this video .… tarsands is com­ing if Obama signs off on it. As for­mer NASA weather expert said.… “it is game over for the envi­ron­ment if Key­stone XL II goes thru.” http://vimeo.com/27902739

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Diane-Pagen/764350724 Diane Pagen

    From Delaware County, New York: Here’s to peo­ple with some guts! The indus­try “lead­ers” should be forced to live next to PA’s frack­ing sites. Then let’s see how “clean” and “safe” they think frack­ing is.

  • Cas­san­dra

    Maybe, just maybe we can start to turn our atten­tion to bio­mass, folks. You know the kind of energy that is carbon-neutral, easy renewed and not harm­ful to the earth, air or water.…
    Can you say, switch­grass? This ridicu­lous spin by a sin­is­ter indus­try to come off as our energy sav­ior is a bunch of malarkey. There is noth­ing good about frack­ing. Nat­ural gas is the Methadone Amer­ica has turned to as it comes to grips with the fact that we are ADDICTS…to oil. This can­not be a long-term solu­tion. It will not be a panacea. Nat­ural gas and it’s cost will ulti­mately break our hearts with the real­ity that we have irre­versibly screwed up — again. Repub­li­cans & Dems, alike need to get it straight — sus­tain­abil­ity is all that actu­ally mat­ters. an Oth­er­wise we are just going to go through all of this mess again when the costs are too high. How many pipeline explo­sions, house explo­sions, pol­luted water-tables, and earth­quakes are jus­ti­fied? All for what? Oh, right…so we can drive a big-SUV, use plas­tic every­day and throw it away and gen­er­ally walk around in denial…
    I would like to think that we are smarter than that. And that we can out smart these cor­po­ra­tions who hand us poi­son and say it’s med­i­cine.
    Our energy would be bet­ter applied to find­ing and build­ing REAL solu­tions to the prob­lems. Read up on biomass/biofuels/biopolymers — cre­ated from GRASSES! This is not New Age artsy-fartsy stuff, peeps. This is the real deal and it’s right in front of us. The prob­lem is, the cor­po­ra­tions can’t lay claim to grass­lands that an Amer­i­can farmer tends to and sells at the mar­ket — that directly impacts his com­mu­nity.
    So, like any addict — Amer­ica will have have to con­front her demons and learn to live a dif­fer­ent way.

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