Just trust us

In a River Reporter article of March 22, Jack Dahl of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) was quoted as saying, “The drilling companies in our area do not use the toxic fluids mentioned at the Waxman committee hearings… I know these companies well and I don’t believe they are lying to us.”

In a recent letter to constituents, New York State Senator John Bonacic wrote, “DEC assured me that current regulations in place for drilling are strictly enforced and that adequate environmental and water protections are in place.”

Referring to natural gas drilling, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Kathleen A. McGinty said, “This activity can be a tremendous economic boon for our state’s citizens and industries… However, developing our energy resources cannot come at the expense of our environmental resources.”

And after the Susquehanna River Basin Commission and the DEP halted drilling by companies in Lycoming County that had not obtained permits, the Delaware River Basin Commission said it would be similarly tough in enforcing regulations in this watershed.

So Daddy’s taking care of everything and we can just sit back and collect royalties, right?

The problem is that we’ve heard reassurances like this before, and they don’t always mean much. The Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, assured the public that the air quality near ground zero after the bombing of the World Trade Center posed no public health problem. But thousands of emergency workers and volunteers exposed to the site have since developed debilitating health problems or even died. In 1999, FEMA assured residents of Gulfport, IL that their levees would withstand a flood of historic proportions. According to the Associated Press, most of them dropped their flood insurance on that basis. The levees broke last week.

At least two vulnerabilities in the system of protections regarding natural gas drilling must be addressed: the scope of the relevant agencies’ power, which can be changed by law; and effective enforcement, which requires staffing and funding. Bonacic and Dahl may think our protections are adequate, but Dr. Theo Colborn, whose credentials on the subject of health, pharmaceuticals, chemistry and toxicology are extensive and who has analyzed chemicals left behind by spills and in containment pits of gas drilling fluid residues, begs to differ. In her testimony before Senator Waxman’s subcommittee, Holborn repeatedly stressed the importance of knowing the contents of fracking fluids, currently kept secret because they’re proprietary. The DEC and DEP have told us that the states could write laws that would enable us to find out what’s in those fluids. But no such laws currently exist.

The personal confidence of an agency official that the drillers are trustworthy is not a remotely adequate safeguard. At a bare minimum, there must be full disclosure and ongoing testing of fracking fluids. Perhaps Senator Bonacic—who has proved his mettle in the power-line fight—could propose a bill imposing such requirements. It beats telling us not to worry our pretty little heads about threats to the environment.

Staffing is another problem. Ron Gilius, director of the DEP Bureau of Oil and Gas Management, said at a recent meeting that he has only two staff members to inspect drill sites. His solution is to hire three more.

In the past year alone, Pennsylvania issued about 7,300 drilling permits—and that’s on top of about 100,000 oil and gas wells already in place. If each well were inspected once a year, that would come to about 60 wells per day, per inspector, assuming no weekends or holidays. Sorry, secretary McGinty: you may have the desire, but you don’t have the tools, to protect our environmental resources.

We believe in the good intentions of Dahl, Gilius, Bonacic and McGinty. But they are dead wrong if they think the current protections are adequate. Trust, but verify. That means new laws and a more powerful and better-staffed regulatory structure. The suggestions we have made above are just a beginning.

And funding shouldn’t be a problem. The drilling companies will be making billions of dollars, and they have to drill where the gas is—they can’t take their business elsewhere. The fees or taxes that could finance a robust regulatory structure would be pocket change to them, but to us it could make the difference between life and death.

Also in this issue:

• Solving the Upper Delaware temperature crisis

Dr. Punnybone

Hare of the Dog