Delaware River Basin Commission Publishes Newly Proposed Gas Drilling Regulations

• 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 link to the DRBC’s revised natural gas drilling regulations are now up on their website. A much easier to read fact sheet can be viewed as well. The long awaited revisions are published ahead of the scheduled November 21 public meeting. The Commission plans to discuss the draft regulations, and take a vote. No public testimony will be taken at the meeting. This has activists up in arms.
A press release put out by a coalition of environmental groups lambasted the DRBC for not allowing more public input on the revised draft.
“DRBC is slamming the door in the public’s face and it’s simply unacceptable,” said Maya von Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper. “It’s a gross violation of the public trust not to hear what people have to say about these changed violations.”
The debate over drilling in the Delaware River Basin has raged for three years. The November 21 vote is expected to clear the way for drilling in Wayne and Pike counties. The Northeast Pennsylvania does lie above a potentially lucrative section of the Marcellus Shale. But the DRBC has set a moratorium on drilling in that part of the state until they approve new drilling rules.
The DRBC issued its original draft back in December, 2010. Hours of public testimony and thousand of public comments have been submitted to the DRBC since then. The Commission has twice postponed the public meeting on the revised rules, saying they needed more time to sort through all the public input. The environmental groups say residents should be allowed to weigh in on the revisions. Some sort of fireworks should be expected at November’s meeting.

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