PUC opens proposed impact fee rules for public comment

• Laura Legere
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  Laura Legere is a freelance journalist based in Scranton. She was previously a staff writer for the Scranton Times-Tribune, where her reporting on natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale won Best in Show from the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors as well as awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Inland Press Association and several state contests. She was a 2010 finalist for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists. Laura was born and raised in Maine and holds degrees from Middlebury College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission put out its proposed rules for collecting and distributing impact fees from natural gas wells for public comment today.
The proposal largely codifies the agency’s existing procedures, which were adopted in May 2012 and revised several times since then. It addresses which wells are subject to the fee and the producers’ reporting requirements as well as how the fees are calculated, collected and distributed.
It does not address the PUC’s other role in administering the state’s revised oil and gas law, known as Act 13: evaluating local ordinances that impose conditions, requirements or limitations on oil or gas operations. That section of the law is being reviewed by the state Supreme Court after the Commonwealth Court declared the provision unconstitutional in 2012. The PUC is barred from conducting ordinance reviews in the meantime.

The rules proposal will be open for public comment for 30 days.

 

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