Cornell University Professor at Odds with Pa. DEP Over Regulation

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

May 31, 2012 | 5:29 PM

DEP Secretary Michael Krancer takes notes during a May presentation

A Cornell University professor told a congressional subcommittee on Thursday that the development of shale gas has happened so quickly, there’s now a “research gap” on the public health and environmental impacts. Robert Howarth told the subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform, that most of the peer-reviewed science has been published within the last 14 months.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports that Howarth also urged more federal oversight of natural gas drilling.

“The pollution from unconventional oil and gas development moves across state lines in surface waters, in the air and in gas pipelines,” Howarth said. “This interstate pollution clearly calls for federal oversight of environmental and public- health regulation.”

Howarth authored a report on the greenhouse gas footprint of shale drilling, concluding the entire process is dirtier than coal and oil. The study created a firestorm, and led to a dispute among Howarth and his colleagues at Cornell.
DEP Secretary Michael Krancer, never one to shy away from criticizing the role of the EPA, submitted remarks to the committee. According to the Bloomberg report, Krancer continues to champion state’s rights when it comes to shale gas regulation.

“The states are light-years ahead of the federal government in terms of experience and know-how about their own individual states and about the science and technique of hydraulic fracturing,” Michael Krancer, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, said.

Howarth summarized results from several recent studies on shale gas development’s impact on air, water, and public health.