Delware River Keeper Letter - DRBC VOTES NO!

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Environmental Groups Concerned About Senate Impact Fee

NPR State Impact
Scott Detrow
Oct. 28, 2011

The direc­tors of five envi­ron­men­tal advo­cacy groups — Clean Water Action, Delaware River­keeper Net­work, the Sierra Club’s Penn­syl­va­nia branch, Earth­works and Pen­nEn­vi­ron­ment — have sent a let­ter to state sen­a­tors, in advance of next week’s vote on a nat­ural gas impact fee.

They’re con­cerned about SB 1100’s “model ordi­nance” lan­guage, which would bar munic­i­pal­i­ties from receiv­ing fee money, if they past strict reg­u­la­tions on drilling. The groups also want to see stronger envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions and setbacks.

Octo­ber 28, 2011

Dear Mem­bers of the Penn­syl­va­nia State Senate:


We are writ­ing con­cern­ing Sen­a­tor Scarnati’s bill to address Mar­cel­lus Shale issues, SB 1100, which was recently amended and voted out of Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee. Our orga­ni­za­tions have two con­cerns we would like to draw to your attention.


First, the signed orga­ni­za­tions of the attached let­ter (sent to all mem­bers of the leg­is­la­ture on June 3, 2011) are writ­ing you to reaf­firm our posi­tion that we strongly OPPOSE any efforts to limit a municipality’s abil­ity to pro­tect itself, to weaken or stan­dard­ize munic­i­pal zon­ing author­ity, to pun­ish com­mu­ni­ties that choose to exer­cise their rights, or to give the Attor­ney Gen­eral the power to cir­cum­vent a tra­di­tional court process and deter­mine the fate of munic­i­pal zon­ing laws.

Munic­i­pal­i­ties all across Penn­syl­va­nia are work­ing to enact or have enacted mea­sures designed to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment and health, safety, and wel­fare of their com­mu­ni­ties and its res­i­dents in light of the rush to drill for nat­ural gas in the Mar­cel­lus Shale. In addi­tion, Penn­syl­va­nia Supreme Court rul­ings have made it clear that the state Oil and Gas Act does not pre­vent munic­i­pal­i­ties from apply­ing zon­ing codes to gas wells.


Our pre­vi­ous let­ter referred specif­i­cally to a pro­vi­sion in the orig­i­nal ver­sion where the receipt of rev­enue from an impact fee was tied to adop­tion of a model zon­ing ordi­nance. Recently, efforts have begun to amend this leg­is­la­tion. Whether nego­ti­a­tions result in the preser­va­tion of this “one size fits all” pro­vi­sion or pro­duces new lan­guage that would attempt to weaken a municipality’s abil­ity to pro­tect its res­i­dents, the result is still the under­min­ing of the cen­tral pur­pose of local ordi­nances: to address the par­tic­u­lar needs and con­cerns of munic­i­pal­i­ties, which vary greatly with regard to nat­ural resources, pop­u­la­tion loca­tion and den­sity, com­mer­cial sec­tors, and other aspects.


We request that you stand with us and your munic­i­pal­ity in this cause and encour­age your lead­er­ship to do the same. It is essen­tial that we pre­serve a municipality’s abil­ity to deter­mine what is best for their com­mu­nity and its’ res­i­dents and we hope you will call for the strongest decision-making pow­ers pos­si­ble for local communities.


Sec­ond, we are con­cerned that the cur­rent lan­guage in the amended ver­sion of SB 1100 does not pro­vide enough pro­tec­tion for Pennsylvania’s drink­ing water sup­plies. Both the recently released Cen­ter for Rural Penn­syl­va­nia study and the pre­vi­ously pub­lished Duke Uni­ver­sity study found that drink­ing water wells had increased con­t­a­m­i­na­tion when Mar­cel­lus Shale gas wells were drilled within 3,000 feet of the water sup­ply. Unfor­tu­nately, the cur­rent lan­guage only increases pri­vate well set­backs to 500 feet and pub­lic water sup­ply set­backs to 1,000 feet.


While SB 1100 does increase the zone of pre­sumed con­t­a­m­i­na­tion to 3,000 feet, a set­back of at least that dis­tance, and ide­ally 5,000 feet, would pro­vide real pro­tec­tion to res­i­dents. Increas­ing the zone of pre­sumed con­t­a­m­i­na­tion pro­vides landown­ers with greater legal rights; how­ever, in prac­tice many res­i­dents are unaware of their rights and as a result can­not ben­e­fit from this change. While it is pos­i­tive that more res­i­dents would receive replace­ment water sup­plies under this change, it would be far more ben­e­fi­cial to sim­ply pre­vent the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from tak­ing place through a set­back pro­vi­sion. Replace­ment water sup­plies are a bur­den on res­i­dents and often result in a loss of prop­erty value.


We would urge you to sup­port a greater set­back for pri­vate and pub­lic drink­ing water sup­plies, with 3,000 feet being a min­i­mum dis­tance that is sci­en­tif­i­cally backed and 5,000 feet as an even more pro­tec­tive setback.


Thank you for your atten­tion to this issue.

Environmentalists divided on soon-to-be released shale commission report

Posted: October 22, 2011 5:00 am
By Freda R. Savana Staff Writer
PhillyBurbs.com

Matt Stanley / Staff Photographer

A member of the Citizens Marcellus Shale Commission has resigned, saying the group "came up short" in its final report, scheduled for release Monday.

Delaware Riverkeeper Network member Maya van Rossum resigned her commission post late last week, citing the panel's decision not to call for a statewide moratorium on natural gas drilling until regulations can be enacted.

Van Rossum said although the commission's report contained several good recommendations for reforming gas-drilling regulations, it failed to go far enough.

"In the final analysis, the commission's leadership insisted on what they deemed a politically palatable report, rather than one which fully served to seek protections from known harms and informational deficiencies associated with shale gas development," van Rossum said.

Without a moratorium, said the Riverkeeper, the commission "undermined its mission to protect the public health and environment."

The commission is comprised of eight civic and environmental organizations, including PennEnvironment, the Sierra Club and the League of Women Voters, and was formed in late August to give Pennsylvania citizens a place to speak out and recommend action on Marcellus gas drilling, according to the organization.

The commission held five hearings across the state last month and heard testimony from residents and national drilling experts, with about 100 Pennsylvanians submitting written comments online, according to the panel.

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