Corbett's Energy Executive Defends Impact Fee

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

March 14, 2012 | 10:00 AM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Patrick Henderson is Governor Corbett's Energy Executive.

In a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial, Governor Tom Corbett’s energy executive, Patrick Henderson, defends the new impact fee law against claims it undermines public health efforts.
“This is the most progressive hydraulic fracturing disclosure law in the nation,” Henderson writes, continuing:

It builds upon a national model adopted in Colorado — a law which was universally praised, even by groups as environmentally demanding as the Environmental Defense Fund. The law protects proprietary information from disclosure to the general public, but not from environmental or health officials.
Setting aside the fact that the hydraulic fracturing process itself has never been found to contaminate a water well, the new law explicitly requires this information be disclosed to medical professionals so that they may provide treatment should the need ever arise. Contrary to Dr. Goldstein and Ms. Kriesky’s claim, this enables medical professionals to meet their highest ethical obligations and to fully inform their patients.
As Dr. Goldstein and Ms. Kriesky know well, protecting our environment — the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we live upon — is the very foundation of protecting public health. The two are inextricably linked. Pennsylvanians can rest assured that the new law protects both.

Last month StateImpact Pennsylvania covered medical professionals’ concerns about the bill, as well as Henderson and Senate Republican leaders’ response to the criticism.