Environment is key element in new report about drilling
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At 137 pages and 96 separate recommendations, the governor's Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission report released Friday after four months of work has no single main point.
Though the disputatious proposals that came from the commission on impact fees and forced pooling grabbed most of the initial attention, to the industry and environmental groups, it was clear where the emphasis lies.
"The meat of that report focuses on the environment and safety recommendations," said Matt Pitzarella, spokesman for Range Resources, the dominant Marcellus Shale driller in southwestern Pennsylvania and a member of the commission.
Of the 96 recommendations in the report, 43 of them were in the section titled Public Health, Safety & Environmental Protection.
The reasons for that are clear to both sides: While financial issues like forced pooling and impact fees have been the hot potato for state politicians, down in the townships and boroughs where drillers and residents come into direct contact, it is the environmental and health issues that dominate the conversation.
So, while there are some broad environmental-related recommendations such as allowing drillers to "adopt" orphan gas wells, giving drillers good Samaritan protections if they use acid mine drainage water in fracking, and give the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection the power to impose civil fines on drillers, the majority of those 43 recommendations deal with on-the-ground issues, including proposals to:
• Require well operators to track and report on the transportation, processing and treatment or disposal of their frack water -- the water, chemical and sand mixture used to fracture and hold open the shale and release the natural gas held within the rock;
• Expand a well operator's presumed liability for tainting drinking water at a neighbor's well, from within 1,000 feet to within 2,500 feet, and the time that it can detected from six months of completion of a well to one year;
First Published July 24, 2011 12:00 am
