DEP Cancels Meeting with Enviro's Due to "Intemperate Message"

• 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.

A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection says a decision to cancel a meeting with a coalition of environmental organizations over residential water tests was due to an “intemperate message” one group posted on the internet.
The meeting, initiated by Clean Water Action, was scheduled for January 24th, but organizers say DEP unexpectedly cancelled the meeting a day before, without explanation. The groups say they requested the sit-down with DEP staffers as a fact-finding mission to gain clarity over how DEP reports water quality results to residents concerned about the impact of natural gas drilling. Last November, StateImpact reported on testimony in a deposition of a DEP employee, which seemed to indicate that not all contaminants found in sampled water were reported to residents.
DEP denies that its protocols hide any important information from residents. In a letter to State Rep. Jesse White, Secretary Michael Krancer defended his department’s policy on water quality reports.

But the environmental groups say they’re not convinced that DEP is completely transparent, and have more questions for DEP staff. Iris Marie Bloom is with Protecting Our Waters, one of the groups that had scheduled to meet with DEP.
“It is clear that people who have impacted water have not gotten complete information about what’s in their water,” said Bloom. “What is not clear is what the rationales are, and what can be done to protect impacted residents. And how DEP’s policies can be changed in the direction of protecting public health.”
DEP says it cancelled the meeting due to a message posted on the website of the group Marcellus Protest, which had posted a meeting to plan a “take down” of Secretary Krancer. DEP spokesman Kevin Sunday calls the post “intemperate” and attributes it to the liaison for the coalition, Clean Water Action. Clean Water Action says their original post did not include the “take down” language.
CWA staffer Steve Hvozdovich says CWA has worked effectively with DEP through several administrations, both Republican and Democrat. But, he says, that does not mean the agency should expect the organization to refrain from criticizing policies it thinks would not protect the environment and public health.
“I didn’t see the NRA’s traditionally aggressive tone toward President Obama’s [gun control] policies prevent them from having a seat at the table,” said Hvozdovich.
Protecting Our Waters’ organizer Iris Marie Bloom says DEP should not engage in “collective punishment.”
“I can see where [Secretary Krancer’s] feelings would be hurt by the language [of the post],” says Bloom. “But this is a very serious discussion we’re trying to have and [to cancel the meeting] is an inappropriate reaction.”
Bloom says by her count, hundreds of Pennsylvania residents have experienced water issues related to Marcellus Shale drilling.
DEP says they are willing to reschedule, as long as Clean Water Action is not at the table.

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