Former DEP Official Says State Lacks in Air Quality Enforcement

Susan Phillips / StateImpactPA

Kevin Stew­art (L) with the Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion tes­ti­fies at the hear­ing on air pol­lu­tion and nat­ural gas.

Up until two weeks ago, George Jugovic led the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Protection’s south­west regional office. On Wednes­day, Jugovic told law­mak­ers at a hear­ing in Delaware County that his air qual­ity man­agers were “crushed” by the vol­ume of air emis­sion per­mit requests. That increase in per­mits comes from Mar­cel­lus Shale nat­ural gas drilling oper­a­tions, which require the use of com­bustible engines to extract the gas, and push it through pipelines.

Jugovic tes­ti­fied at a Demo­c­rat led hear­ing on the impact of nat­ural gas drilling on air pol­lu­tion. He says within the last year, in the south­west region alone, his depart­ment issued per­mits for the release of 13,000 tons of nitro­gen oxide related to the Mar­cel­lus Shale indus­try. Nitro­gen oxide cre­ates ground level smog. Com­pa­nies requested the per­mits for com­pres­sor sta­tions, which are needed to pump the gas through dis­tri­b­u­tion pipelines.

Those com­pres­sor sta­tions can use either elec­tric­ity, nat­ural gas, or diesel to power their engines. But Jugovic says the DEP’s rules regard­ing the clean­est avail­able tech­nolo­gies are 10 years old.

“The depart­ment should be ensur­ing that every new inter­nal com­bus­tion com­pres­sor engine installed in Penn­syl­va­nia incor­po­rates cur­rent best avail­able con­trol tech­nol­ogy to pro­tect pub­lic health and the envi­ron­ment,” said Jugovic.

Elec­tric­ity is the clean­est, fol­lowed by nat­ural gas, and diesel, which is the worst pol­luter. Jugovic says the dif­fer­ence between the clean­est and the dirt­i­est tech­nol­ogy is sig­nif­i­cant. And, he notes gas drilling is the sec­ond largest source of nitro­gen oxide pol­lu­tion in the state. The largest source is coal fired power plants.

Jugovic served in the DEP under four gov­er­nors, start­ing with Gov­er­nor Richard Thorn­burgh. He is now work­ing for the envi­ron­men­tal advo­cacy group Penn Future. He said cur­rent DEP Sec­re­tary Michael Krancer should require indus­try to use the “best avail­able technology.”

Andrew Pater­son, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of Tech­ni­cal Affairs with the indus­try group, Mar­cel­lus Shale Coali­tion, said many pro­duc­ers are already using the clean­est machin­ery and tech­niques to extract the gas. Pater­son also con­firmed that there is a back­log of air emis­sion per­mit requests with the depart­ment for com­pres­sor stations.

But the DEP exempts some parts of the Mar­cel­lus drilling process from over­sight. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists tes­ti­fied that those exemp­tions make sense for con­ven­tional drilling, but not the Mar­cel­lus Shale. Joe Osborne is the Legal Direc­tor for GASP, or Group Against Smog and Pol­lu­tion. He said Mar­cel­lus Shale wells have more of an impact on air pollutions.

“Mar­cel­lus wells pro­duce larger vol­umes of gas, pro­duc­tion is more equip­ment inten­sive,” says Osborne,” said Osborne. And a sin­gle Mar­cel­lus well site includes mul­ti­ple wells.”

Osborne said more than 1500 well pads are exempt from Pennsylvania’s air qual­ity permits.

That means reg­u­la­tors don’t have infor­ma­tion on the gas industry’s cumu­la­tive con­tri­bu­tion to air pol­lu­tion.  Kevin Stew­art is the direc­tor of envi­ron­men­tal health for the Amer­i­can Lung Asso­ci­a­tion in Pennsylvania.

“Already we’re play­ing catch-up because the Mar­cel­lus indus­try has been work­ing on this for years,” said Stew­art.  “We don’t have the basic inven­tory infor­ma­tion to know what’s being emit­ted, what are the con­trols and how strongly can we con­trol this in the future.”

For­mer DEP sec­re­tary John Hanger tes­ti­fied that a pro­gram put in place under Ren­dell would have helped fund the air qual­ity divi­sion. But Gov­er­nor Tom Cor­bett can­celled the planned air per­mit fee structure.

In writ­ten tes­ti­mony, DEP chief Michael Krancer said his depart­ment is work­ing to update the air qual­ity reg­u­la­tions relat­ing to nat­ural gas drilling.  In a recent let­ter to the edi­tor, Krancer defended his agency’s cur­rent abil­ity to over­see the oil and gas industry.