Drilling in the forests

By Cindy Ross

01/26/2010

Last month, Pennsylvania's state forests in the north central mountains and along the state's Northern Tier of counties, an area that includes upper reaches of the Chesapeake drainage, were opened to natural gas drilling. These forests are home to hundreds of miles of hiking trails, some of the best trout streams in the mid-Atlantic, majestic elk herds, and an abundance of birds and other animals. The forests are where thousands go to rejuvenate by immersing themselves in the natural world. But these lands will now be irreparably altered by natural gas extraction.

The drilling affects us in the lower reaches of the watershed, too, for it is our water that is being used up to blast the gas out of the earth; our water that is being contaminated; our fish that are dying from the salt and heavy metals introduced to streams from spills.

Governor Edward Rendell decided that Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) must help close the state budget gap. The Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry in turn decided that leasing the gas drilling rights would not pose a threat to the state's forest lands and waters. So, DCNR opened tracts in Elk, Moshannon, Sproul, Susquehanna and Tioga State Forests in Cameron, Clearfield, Clinton, Potter and Tioga counties. Let's look at the impact.

On this sizeable chunk of land, about 32,000 acres, 300 well sites are planned. Each site will contain six to eight wells on 25-30 pad sites. Each well site will consume 4-5 acres of land. Each well will necessitate 800 truck runs to bring fresh water and haul away wastewater. It will take one to five million gallons of water to drill each well. The water is sucked out of local streams, pulled from underground aquifers, or brought in by tank truck. Miles of road will be constructed to service the wells, and pipelines will be needed to move the gas from wellhead to consumer.

Last year Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) took over the authority to issue permits from local County Conservation Districts, the watchdogs of our land, water, and soil, that knew the area's best. Now there is concern that permits are being issued without adequate technical review and analysis of the damage caused by construction and post-construction run-off.

This year DEP's already tight budget has been slashed, making it more difficult for the agency to adequately review permits or monitor the gas drilling. The agency has rubber stamped applications without adequate review and was unable to make regular checks on drilling sites.

Yes, the governor needed to balance the budget, but there was an alternative to drilling in the state forests. Pennsylvania could have taxed natural gas extraction. Right now, Pennsylvania is one of the only states in the country that does not have an extraction tax. If imposed on wells outside the forests, this money could have funded the budget and cleaned up the environmental mess being created by drilling, and spared the forests. But the legislature failed to do the right thing. Instead, it opened gas drilling in the forests to the highest bidders, bringing in about $129 million, a short-run windfall for selling the state's legacy.

The gas lobbyists hoodwinked lawmakers with the self-serving premise that taxing gas extraction would cripple an emerging industry and cost Pennsylvania jobs and opportunities. The governor (and a majority of legislators) worried that if they imposed a severance tax, then gas companies would pull up stakes and move elsewhere. That is doubtful since drillers call the Marcellus the biggest natural gas play in the U.S. With trillions of cubic feet of gas beneath Pennsylvania, is it likely the drillers will leave?

Water pollution continues to be the chief environmental threat arising from the Marcellus Shale development. Adequate technology and regulation are not in place to handle what is being done to our forests and water. A new act, called the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act of 2009 would help ensure that the gas companies take responsibility for what they do. Introduced in Congress last summer, so far the bill has gotten little action.

It is not okay that the state forests in upstate Pennsylvania are going to be desecrated. The hikers should be angry. The fly fishermen should be furious. And the hunters, they should be going ballistic.