Restore Conservation District Oversight Of Gas Wells?
Potter County Commissioners Doug Morley, Paul Heimel and Susan Kefover have become actively involved in a lobbying effort to restore county conservation districts’ role in reviewing erosion and sedimentation plans for gas and oil drilling operations. With the support of Potter County, birthplace of the first conservation district in the state, a resolution will be presented to the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (CCAP) next month.
Assuming it draws majority support, the measure will authorize CCAP to push for legislative approval. That resolution seeks reversal of a 2009 DEP policy that stripped conservation districts of their long-held erosion and sedimentation permitting authority for oil and gas drilling sites. DEP moved to centralize permit review for drilling with its regional oil and gas offices. At the same time, this move took review authority for those plans away from county conservation districts, whose staffs are more familiar with local environmental issues and trained to deal with issues encountered in the field.
The Public Education Committee from the Potter County Natural Gas Task has investigated the level of DEP staffing for natural gas drilling sites in the region. According to Bruce Jankura, DEP’s oil and gas inspector supervisor, the Mansfield office is staffed with two inspectors who are responsible for the oversight of drilling sites — existing and new — for all of Potter, Tioga and Cameron counties and the western section of Bradford County.
Jankura said that although there are 13 steps in the drilling process that could be inspected, all of them cannot possibly be monitored, so DEP attempts to monitor a limited number of steps at each well. He said there is no requirement that an inspector be present during hydrofracturing. The same two inspectors responsible for the compliance monitoring responsibilities during drilling are also charged with responding to complaints in those four counties, Jankura said.
Commissioner Heimel introduced the conservation district resolution to CCAP’s Energy, Environment and Land Use Committee, on which he serves. A companion resolution, which will be considered by the CCAP statewide membership next month, supports state regulation and registration of local natural gas “gathering lines” (pipelines), which are currently not subject to regulation.
8 comments:
Another example of the commissioners of the county not having a clue about this oversight. If the DEP does not have the staff, how do the Conservation Districts have the staff to oversee the natural gas industry.
Mr. Jankura failed to mention that there are in fact more inspectors that the two that cover those counties. He only inspects one aspect of the industry and there are additional inspectors that are responsible for the E&S oversight.
Besides, Mr. Jankura inspects the well drilling itself. You really want Conservation District personnel inspecting well drilling.
One more question. Where is the money going to come from to pay for the additional Conservation District employees? I am sure they have a master plan for this as well.
3:40 p.m.
YES, I do want the Conservation District employees doing the inspecting. They are the most familiar with the areas in question and actually care what happens in these areas versus some guy who comes from Williamsport that is only hired because he's someone's family and wanted to get his foot into the state employment system.
Well frankly 3:40 reveals a very obvious bias and probably is very eager to have as little monitoring and inspecting of this activity as possible. 3:40 does not reflect the opinion of WE THE PEOPLE who have a right (not a privilege) in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to clean air and water and a certain quality of life that some people who are very greedy and blinded by money would like to deny us.
Here is what I learned with a simple phone call: even some of the gas companies around Potter County are in favor of this idea of getting the Conservation Districts involved and they also agree DEP does not have enough inspectors. They do not mind having inspectors because they do not have anything to hide. To the person at 3:40 who wrote the comment above, this information comes from someone who is in management position with a big gas company. He actually thinks this is a good idea. I thought you might like to know that. Post your email address on here and I will send you a follow up message so we can take this offline. Everybody have a great weekend!
i can't believe you morons voted for these clowns
Corbett is not a clown. He is just misguided when it comes to rolling over and playing dead for the gas industry.
And I did not vote for him.
Restoring local conservation districts authority of E&S permitting (IMO)would be good.
Potter has had a very high number of E&S (compliance) violations.
Most well sites in Potter have been cited for E&S related violations.
There have been many instances when runoff from sites directly impacted our waterways.
Local eyes,authority with the ability to enforce compliance, deny well site permits and re-mediate situations as they are occurring is much needed.
I would prefer to see Hydraulic Fracturing banned because well sites allow the toxic wet messes to flow toward our streams and aquifers, however local authority over permitting and well site placement will give citizens a local "go to" commission to present objections to during the well site permitting process.
This is a good thing and a step in the right direction.
We need a local entity that has a say in whether or not E&S permits are issued.It would be great if we had local authority that could deny the issuance of permits and prevent site placement in sensitive areas
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