Governor’s Budget a Mixed Bag for Conservationists

Susan Phillips / StateIm­pact Pennsylvania

A sign posted in Susque­han­nock state forest.

Gov­er­nor Corbett’s 2012 bud­get pro­posal shows a pro­jected decrease of more than $3 mil­lion from min­eral lease roy­al­ties. That’s the first decrease since 2003, before the Mar­cel­lus Shale rush took off. The rea­son for the reduc­tion is partly due to depressed nat­ural gas prices, and partly due to a mora­to­rium on new gas leases in state forests. Envi­ron­men­tal­ists had wor­ried the Gov­er­nor would open more state forests to drilling. But that’s not on the books yet. All told, the state’s Oil and Gas Lease Fund has about $22 mil­lion dol­lars less to dis­trib­ute than last year.

The Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion and Nat­ural Resources will get almost $70 mil­lion dol­lars from the fund. That accounts for about one third of the department’s entire bud­get, which wor­ries some conservationists.

For­mer DCNR sec­re­tary John Quigley served under Gov­er­nor Ed Ren­dell. Quigley says money from the Oil and Gas Fund was orig­i­nally diverted to DCNR dur­ing his watch to keep the state parks open. But he says bankrolling the depart­ment with lease money is a slip­pery slope.

“That’s the prob­lem,” says Quigley. “Your con­ser­va­tion agency shouldn’t be depen­dent on cut­ting down trees and drilling for nat­ural gas to keep the lights on.”

Quigley says the depart­ment used to get the bulk of its money directly from the gen­eral fund. Tim­ber and state park fees also gen­er­ate rev­enue for DCNR, as well as fed­eral grants. About 700,000 acres of state for­est land has been leased to drilling com­pa­nies. Much of that is in North Cen­tral Penn­syl­va­nia, where the Mar­cel­lus Shale yields what’s called “dry” gas. Many of the drillers are scal­ing back those oper­a­tions for the more lucra­tive “wet” gas avail­able in areas where the state does not own the land. So leas­ing more state land may just be a mat­ter of wait­ing until the mar­ket improves.

For some, the fact that Cor­bett has held off on leas­ing more for­est land is small com­fort. The Gov­er­nor wants to take money usu­ally ear­marked for for­est con­ser­va­tion and open space and put it all into the gen­eral fund. The Key­stone Recre­ation, Park and Con­ser­va­tion Fund, which uses pro­ceeds from real estate trans­fer taxes, has been zeroed out in his 2012 proposal.

Quigley says Corbett’s new bud­get also cuts DCNR’s for­est research and forestry regeneration.

“The Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion isn’t even plant­ing trees,” says Quigley.