Toomey Calls DRBC Voting Delay “Unfortunate”

Scott Detrow / StateIm­pact Pennsylvania

Repub­li­can U.S. Sen­a­tor Pat Toomey, dur­ing an August 2011 town hall meet­ing in Tioga County

In an inter­view with the Wayne Inde­pen­dent, Repub­li­can U.S. Sen­a­tor Pat Toomey called the Delaware River Basin Commission’s deci­sion to post­pone a vote on new drilling reg­u­la­tions “unfortunate.”

Here’s the excerpt, from Toomey’s con­ver­sa­tion with reporter Josh Wengler:

Q:There are those in this area that have a vested inter­est in gas devel­op­ment that take huge issue with the Delaware River Basin Com­mis­sion (DRBC) for the fact that they are an unelected body and they are able to throw a mon­key wrench into gas extrac­tion. What’s your take on that?

A:I think there deci­sion was unfor­tu­nate. I don’t think it was nec­es­sary to impose a mora­to­rium. I did not sup­port the mora­to­rium. I think the DEP is capa­ble of reg­u­lat­ing this prop­erly and I think it should go ahead on that basis.

Q:Is there any­thing you’re doing at the fed­eral level to help make that happen?

A: My sense is that’s not nec­es­sary at this point, to have some kind of fed­eral inter­ven­tion. It’s con­ceiv­able, but I hope it doesn’t come to that. I would rather see the com­mis­sion come to the right con­clu­sion on its own rather than have fed­eral force.

A:The other thing that’s debated at the fed­eral level is whether or not the EPA (Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency) needs to come in and cre­ate an over­lay of another whole fed­eral reg­u­la­tory frame­work on top of var­i­ous state frame­works and I don’t think that’s nec­es­sary or appro­pri­ate or desir­able. So I have opposed those efforts and I intend to con­tinue to oppose them.