Fish commission wants chunk of any Marcellus tax revenue
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If the state Legislature passes a severance tax on natural gas siphoned from the deep Marcellus Shale, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission should get a cut to cover its growing role in policing streams affected by water pollution, according to John Arway, the commission's executive director.
Mr. Arway said the commission could use $1.6 million a year from a severance tax to hire additional waterway patrol officers and environmental staff to ensure fish, reptiles, amphibians and aquatic organisms and habitats are protected as development of one of the world's biggest unconventional natural gas deposits accelerates.
Already there have been water pollution problems caused by the drilling industry, Mr. Arway said, citing pollution of a spring and a small stream, Little Laurel Run, near a June gas well "blowout" in Clearfield County and in Pine Creek, Tioga County.
"Some of these are not dramatic but are site-specific and local. We are detecting groundwater and surface water pollution from this industry," Mr. Arway said during a meeting Wednesday with the Post-Gazette editorial board.
He said the commission has several dozen cases under investigation.
He noted that a well site survey performed by Fish and Boat Commission officers last winter found pollution problems at 30 percent of the well locations. They ranged from erosion and sediment control problems along roads to inadequately lined wastewater pits.
New deep directional drilling technology has made the 450-million-year-old Devonian formation lying more than a mile deep under three-fourths of the state the hottest natural gas deposit, in the nation, and development pressure is mounting.
Since 2005 there have been nearly 1,700 Marcellus Shale wells drilled and 3,700 have received permit approval by the state Department of Environmental Protection.
A widely quoted industry estimate says 30,000 wells could be drilled into the 95,000-square-mile shale formation under Pennsylvania, West Virginia, eastern Ohio and New York in the next 10 years. Drilling for and extracting the gas could bring billions of dollars into the state and create thousands of jobs, according to industry officials. But getting the gas out of the shale requires drilling companies to pump millions of gallons of water, sand and toxic chemicals into the shale under tremendous pressure to fracture, or "frack," the shale formation and release the gas.
First Published July 29, 2010 12:00 am
