Krancer: DEP Has Expanded Its Inspection Staff

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.

February 23, 2012 | 10:18 AM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

DEP Secretary Michael Krancer

Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer took his turn before the state Senate’s Appropriations Committee yesterday. Discussing his department’s budget, Krancer said DEP has the staff it needs to inspect Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale wells. That’s despite Governor Corbett’s proposal to trim the department’s budget by more than $10 million.
Capitolwire has more:

Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Krancer told the Senate Appropriations panel the department has doubled its Bureau of Oil and Gas Management staff, and said a new revenue stream from the recently passed Marcellus Shale law could also be used for staff funding.
“We do have the resources and the personnel to regulate … in the oil and gas fields and all areas we regulate,” he said. “We’ve increased the number of inspections, doubled from the year before.”
Corbett’s 2012-13 proposed budget, just like his first budget, proposes cuts to the department. Gov. Tom Corbett proposes cutting more than $10 million in state funding from the department’s budget, dropping the budget from $137.2 million to $126.6 million.
Some Senate Democrats raised concerns about how the budget cuts will affect the departments’ ability to handle inspections and permitting, but Krancer said, “right now, I don’t see a problem.”