DEP Tussles with Environmentalists Over Marcellus Air Emissions

Scott Detrow / StateIm­pact Pennsylvania

DEP Sec­re­tary Michael Krancer

Back in Octo­ber, the envi­ron­men­tal group Clean Air Coun­cil told the EPA that the state Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion was not doing its job of inform­ing the pub­lic about poten­tial air pol­lu­tion related to nat­ural gas pro­duc­tion. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists worry about emis­sions from com­pres­sor sta­tions, which help move gas through inter­state pipelines. Those emis­sions can include volatile organic com­pounds and car­bon monox­ide. More and more com­pa­nies are seek­ing approval for new com­pres­sor sta­tions as the shale boom in Penn­syl­va­nia con­tin­ues. The Clean Air Coun­cil filed a peti­tion with the EPA, say­ing that DEP not only failed to meet the min­i­mum fed­eral require­ments to inform the pub­lic about emis­sions, but also, the state reg­u­la­tors failed to get fed­eral approval of an over­all plan for these sites as required by the Clean Air Act.

Sec­re­tary Michael Krancer responded to the peti­tion this week with a scathing let­ter to EPA direc­tor Lisa Jack­son. In it, he says the peti­tion “lacks merit,” and is a waste of time.

“DEP and EPA should not be unnec­es­sar­ily dis­tracted by this con­trived and irra­tional peti­tion from the impor­tant and seri­ous work our agen­cies per­form,” Krancer said. “Per­haps Clean Air Council’s time would have been bet­ter served by suing EPA for … fail­ing to per­form one of its basic func­tions in a timely man­ner, rather than sub­mit­ting this friv­o­lous peti­tion against Pennsylvania.”

Krancer says he’s still wait­ing for EPA approval on a plan DEP sub­mit­ted back in 2009. On the same day DEP sent the let­ter to Jack­son, they also sched­uled a pub­lic hear­ing on a new com­pres­sor sta­tion in Sul­li­van County.

Clean Air Council’s exec­u­tive direc­tor Joe Minott praised the hear­ing, but when it comes to releas­ing infor­ma­tion, he says it’s a no-brainer.

“This is not a fight we should be hav­ing,” said Minott. The infor­ma­tion is out there. DEP should pro­vide it to the pub­lic. I’m sur­prised by what I think is an overreaction.”

DEP says they sched­uled the hear­ing on the pro­posed Cen­tral New York Oil and Gas com­pres­sor sta­tion in David­son Town­ship because “a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of cit­i­zens” asked for it.