Citizen's Marcellus Shale Commission Wants to Slow Down Drilling

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.

October 24, 2011 | 1:08 PM

A coalition of environmental and good government groups critical of Pennsylvania’s natural gas drilling says the state has moved too fast, and it needs to slow down the Marcellus Shale boom. The Citizen’s Marcellus Shale Commission was created in response to Governor Corbett’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission, which released its own report in July. The Citizen’s Commission held five hearings across the state, where 400 people attended, and 116 participants gave testimony.
The report from the Citizen’s Commission includes 100 recommendations, which can be broken down into four categories — water, air and land contamination, the use of water to drill, protection of habitat, and the rights of landowners and communities.
One recommendation includes the elimination of the use of toxic chemicals in the production of natural gas. But the commissioners aren’t clear on which chemicals should be eliminated. The use of fracking to extract gas is controversial because water, sand and chemicals are shot down into wells at high pressure to release the gas. Commissioners say they worry about the disposal of flowback fluid, citing accidents where the resulting wastewater has spilled, contaminating surface land and water.
The Citizen’s Commission did not recommend a full blown moratorium on drilling in the state, which caused one commissioner to resign last week. Maya von Rossum of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network issued a statement that the failure to impose a moratorium ran counter to the bulk of the citizen testimony.
But Commissioner Dan Surra said the bulk of the testimony and opinions of the commissioners was not “overwhelmingly” in favor of a moratorium. Surra says the next step is to lobby lawmakers to enact the recommendations.