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Marcellus Shale Commission
Report
Elaine Lapp Esch
Yesterday
(July 15, 2011) the recommendations of Corbett's Marcellus Shale
Commission were made public – in a manner of speaking.
Recommendations were not published. Some presenters read through them
very quickly - Mike Krancer, head of DEP, even making a joke about
reading each without taking a breath. Though impossible to capture
details, I was able to get the jist of all but a few.
I am a
Lancaster, PA resident without any financial ties to this industry,
and I would like to give PA a heads-up on what to look for in these
recommendations to Corbett:
Forced
Pooling: A recommendation for forced polling was made at the
insistent of Terry Engelder, the PSU professor who "discovered"
Marcellus Shale and has received funding from the gas industry. His
argument - it is irresponsible and wasteful to leave any gas in the
ground, even if a landowner/mineral rights owner does not want it to
be extracted. This recommendation means that if most residents around
you have leased their mineral rights, the gas company can drill under
your land and extract the gas without your permission - paying you
royalties but not entering into a lease with you. A basic landowner
right is being stripped away – in this case, through eminent domain,
confiscation of private property, is not for the public good, only for
industry profit. Corbett has said that he opposes this practice. We
can only wait and see if the recommendation of this Commission carries
enough weight to change his mind.
Impact
Fee: Clearly, areas that are being drilled have seen rising costs
without direct revenue - royalties are not taxed, and ancillary
business revenue and sales tax go to the state). Roads, bridges,
emergency services, social services, community planning, judicial
services and environmental clean-up have all contributed to
overwhelming local costs directly associated with drilling. The
Commission agreed to recommend an Impact Fee that will go "directly"
towards these costs. (Details of how that could possibly happen
without extensive bureaucracy were not shared.) Though I support this
measure, I have two major concerns:
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Drillers
put $200 million into roads last year simply because the local
governments couldn't keep up with the roads they ruined by the
industry. If charged an impact fee to "cover" roads, will the
drillers back off contributing? The most popular bill for an impact
fee (Scarnati's) brings only $100 million per year for the next two
years. Clearly that will not cover road costs - much less the other
costs listed, especially after being broken down into county and
municipality chunks across the state.
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Costs to
PA taxpayers are wildly rising - hidden in the General Fund, but
blatantly recognizable if you take a moment to look at the
Commission recommendations. At the very least, 20 of the
recommendations will require PA taxpayer funding. There are many
"incentives" tucked into this list - from subsidizing CNG
(Compressed Natural Gas) vehicles, building CNG fueling stations
(about $1 million each), building our own intrastate pipeline,
funding education about gas jobs, expanding or creating databases
about health issues related to drilling, and creating emergency
training, HazMat and communications centers.
We need
a Severance Tax. If Governor Corbett wants to be fair about his
budget and all the cuts he's made to education and healthcare, he
should add up the real costs of gas exploitation and support a
Severance Tax that AT LEAST covers local government costs. If not, we
are not better off because of gas, but are left "privatizing the
profits and socializing the costs".
Science, Not Emotion: This phrase was repeated incessantly
throughout these meetings. But the only scientist on the Commission
(mentioned above) is clearly governed by greed. There are clear
scientific ramifications to drilling such as methane migration and
water contamination and I am outraged that neither were mentioned
yesterday (except during my public comment). Even though the
Marcellus Shale Coalition president recognized verbally during a
presentation that methane migration is "a vexing problem" there was
not one recommendation to minimize or mitigate or explore the issue.
I'm sure those PA taxpayers who can no longer drink their well water
and have methane vents in their yard so their houses don't explode
aren't excited about hearing that the state will be imposing standards
on water well construction - a perfect move to blame the victim and
let the perpetrator continue the abuse.
Comment on this
Commentary - Comments should be directed to Ken Ralph, Editor of
LCDC Media at his
email address. Comments will be posted
here.
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Elaine Lapp Esch
The opinions expressed here are those of
the author alone and are not the official position of the
Lancaster
County Democratic Committee. |
