Natural Gas Drillers Weren’t Required To Tell DEP Whether They Shut Down During Flooding

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Luzerne County res­i­dents clean up after last week’s flooding

Did the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion order nat­ural gas drillers to shut down oper­a­tions in north­ern Penn­syl­va­nia, due to impend­ing flood­ing? And, if so, did the drillers comply?

The answer to the first ques­tion depends on who you ask. As for the sec­ond, county offi­cials say yes, but due to a loop­hole in state reg­u­la­tions, DEP doesn’t have the infor­ma­tion to pro­vide an answer.

As the rem­nants of Trop­i­cal Storm Lee dumped inches of rain on Penn­syl­va­nia, the Cor­bett Admin­is­tra­tion began prepar­ing for flood­ing along the Susque­hanna River and its trib­u­taries. Gov­er­nor Cor­bett said he was con­cerned flood water would over­whelm drilling rigs and their waste dis­posal ponds. “I asked them, through DEP, to shut down pro­duc­tion,” Cor­bett said yes­ter­day. The Repub­li­can made sim­i­lar com­ments Sat­ur­day, accord­ing to the Times-Tribune.

Mr. Cor­bett said he told his Cab­i­net offi­cials to get word to Mar­cel­lus Shale drillers that they needed to act promptly to pre­vent any over­flows from well waste­water reten­tion ponds due to the flooding.

“I’m told there has not been an over­flow for any reten­tion pond,” he added.

But DEP’s Williamsport Com­mu­nity Rela­tions Direc­tor, Daniel Spadoni, said that wasn’t the case. “DEP did not request com­pa­nies shut down oper­a­tion,” he emailed. “The nat­ural gas explo­ration com­pa­nies were well aware of the impend­ing weather.”

Cor­bett briefs the media dur­ing last week

So what hap­pened? Asked to explain the dis­crep­ancy, DEP spokes­woman Katy Gresh said there was com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the depart­ment and nat­ural gas drillers, but it didn’t come in the form of an offi­cial order. “What the Gov­er­nor said is con­sis­tent with what he asked Sec. Krancer to do last week,” she wrote. “Make it clear to oper­a­tors that their sites should be pre­pared for flood­ing and that the admin­is­tra­tion would not accept the flood­ing as an excuse if there were any incidents.”

Did it work? StateIm­pact checked with emer­gency offi­cials in Brad­ford County, who say yes, all drilling activ­ity ceased dur­ing the flood­ing. But DEP couldn’t answer the ques­tion, because, as Spadoni wrote, “com­pa­nies are not required to notify us if they vol­un­tar­ily halt oper­a­tions for this reason.”

Gresh con­firmed DEP never got a firm answer on how many drillers tem­porar­ily shut down. “We can’t say that they all did because they are not required to report to us if they vol­un­tar­ily shut down.” But, she added, “What­ever con­tin­gency mea­sures Pennsylvania’s oper­a­tors put in place evi­dently worked, as we have heard of no major inci­dents related to flooding.”

The Cor­bett Admin­is­tra­tion is prepar­ing a com­pre­hen­sive bill address­ing Mar­cel­lus Shale reg­u­la­tion. Addi­tion­ally, the gov­er­nor will hold a post-flooding post-mortem in the com­ing weeks, to review what went right and what could be improved next time. The Repub­li­can said the noti­fi­ca­tion loop­hole will be some­thing he addresses. “We should be able to com­mu­ni­cate and find out exactly which rigs are shut down and which rigs aren’t,” he said. “And where they need to be shut down. It’s some­thing to take into consideration.”