Krancer Unveils Department of Environmental Protection Changes

Scott Detrow / StateIm­pact Pennsylvania

DEP Sec­re­tary Michael Krancer, announc­ing the department’s changes

Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Sec­re­tary Michael Krancer enjoys his sports metaphors. He framed those marathon Mar­cel­lus Shale Advi­sory Com­mis­sion meet­ings as hockey games: the morn­ing was the “first period,” the mid-afternoon was the “sec­ond period,” and when pub­lic com­ment dragged on, it was “over­time.”  Speak­ing to nat­ural gas drillers in Philadel­phia ear­lier this month, he com­pared energy com­pa­nies who vio­late the rules to Mark McG­wire, who famously used steroid when he broke Major League Baseball’s single-season home run record in 1998.

Today, Krancer took his sports analo­gies to a new level, liken­ing DEP’s orga­ni­za­tional over­haul to the Pitts­burgh Steel­ers. The prob­lem, as Krancer explained, was that DEP’s inter­nal depart­ments weren’t com­mu­ni­cat­ing and coor­di­nat­ing with each other.  “You don’t go see a Steel­ers game to see 11 guys run­ning around doing their own thing. You go to see the Steel­ers team, work­ing together, to win,” he said. “And what you saw on the Ravens day was a bunch of 11 guys at a time doing their own thing. And you saw what the result was. What you saw last week was more like it. That was the team, work­ing together as a team.”

Con­fused? There was plenty more where that came from. “When the Steel­ers are work­ing all on the same page as a team, you’ve got dif­fer­ent guys with dif­fer­ent tal­ents, dif­fer­ent ath­letic abil­i­ties, all work­ing together as a team,” said Krancer, pos­si­bly audi­tion­ing for a slot on the NFL Network.

“You have Troy Pola­malu in the defen­sive back­field with his ath­leti­cism – his unbe­liev­able ath­leti­cism. You have these big, lum­ber­ing defen­sive line­men that are cre­at­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for Troy to go in there and pick off passes. So, it is a way of a team being able to not only not for­get the indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences and tal­ents of regions and pro­grams. It’s a way to max­i­mize that dif­fer­ence, or those dif­fer­ences, all com­ing together to be able to deliver a win, if you’re the Steel­ers. Or a beau­ti­ful Mozart piece, if you’re a sym­phony. Or in our case, effec­tive and con­sis­tent and sen­si­ble and pred­i­ca­ble reg­u­la­tory oversight.”

So there you go.

Set­ting aside the Steel­ers for a moment, let’s take a look at Krancer’s announce­ment. The major news, as we reported yes­ter­day, was the cen­tral­iza­tion of DEP’s nat­ural gas reg­u­la­tors, into a new Oil and Gas Bureau. The office will be a “dep­u­tate,” which means it reports directly to a deputy sec­re­tary in Har­ris­burg. This “will inte­grate and unify Har­ris­burg and [r]egional per­son­nel in this pro­gram into one struc­ture to pro­vide for uni­fied reg­u­la­tion of the oil and gas indus­try,” Krancer wrote in an email to DEP employees.

Ear­lier this year, Krancer tried to push “con­sis­tency” and “clar­ity” in drilling over­sight by requir­ing drilling inspec­tors to for­ward their notices of vio­la­tion directly to DEP offi­cials in Har­ris­burg, rather than the department’s six regional offices. He quickly retracted that direc­tive, after intense, neg­a­tive reac­tion from envi­ron­men­tal groups, who wor­ried the cen­tral­iza­tion would muz­zle field inspec­tors. Today, Krancer said any com­par­i­son to that early move would be an “apples-to-oranges” link. DEP’s drilling-related oper­a­tions will still main­tain their regional auton­omy, he promised, say­ing, “our regional dif­fer­ences, in terms of geol­ogy, in terms of geog­ra­phy, are not going to be lost in the shuf­fle. That is not the case. As a mat­ter of fact, quite the oppo­site. … The regional inter­face is still going to be there. The same peo­ple are going to be there. The same inspec­tors are going to be there. Really, they’re not going to notice any new faces.”

The new oil and gas depart­ment isn’t the only change. Krancer is cre­at­ing sev­eral new offices and bureaus, to over­see brown­field and acid mine drainage cleanup, among other tasks. He’s also shift­ing the pri­or­ity of a depart­ment ded­i­cated to alter­na­tive energy. The new office will now focus on pol­lu­tion prevention.

In his all-staff email, Krancer framed the change as a way to stream­line DEP’s oper­a­tions. “As you are aware and as many of you have expe­ri­enced and reit­er­ated to me dur­ing my vis­its with you, the Depart­ment over the past few years began, to some degree, to drift away from its core mis­sion of envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion,” he wrote. … “Con­sis­tency of enforce­ment and appli­ca­tion of our laws and reg­u­la­tions is vitally impor­tant and you and oth­ers have heard me say that many times.  I will con­tinue to say that we are one DEP, not seven or twelve.  Our goal is to increase coop­er­a­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and coor­di­na­tion among and between us, mak­ing sure we apply the same law the same way every­where and strictly and vig­or­ously enforce that law to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment and pub­lic health.”

“This reor­ga­ni­za­tion will improve coor­di­na­tion among pro­grams; enhance com­mu­ni­ca­tion between pro­gram devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion staff; and ensure statewide con­sis­tency through­out the agency.”