DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell Tuesday wrote to members of the Senate Appropriations Committee to express the agency's strong opposition to House Bill 2154 (Causer-R- Cameron), a bill that weakens environmental standards for conventional (not Shale) oil and gas drilling.
The Senate Appropriations Committee has scheduled an off-the-floor meeting TODAY, the last scheduled voting session day of the year for the House and Senate, to consider the bill.
Other groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund and the PA Environmental Council also expressed their opposition to the bill.
The text of the DEP letter follows--
“I am writing to respectfully urge you to vote against HB 2154 PN 3477 when it receives committee consideration today.
“The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has a significant number of substantial concerns with House Bill 2154 and does not believe these concerns can be resolved within the current bill structure.
“DEP has repeatedly offered to engage with the regulated community to craft a solution that addresses the conventional industry’s concerns while remaining protective of public health and safety and the environment, including an offer to convene a summer workgroup to draft a new piece of legislation.
“Unfortunately, instead, leadership from the community has continued to press forward with a piece of legislation which is so badly flawed it does not present a starting point for discussions.
“To be clear, DEP acknowledges that the conventional oil and gas industry, and the unconventional gas industry, present different challenges in many ways to the environment, and the public health and safety of the citizens of the Commonwealth.
“Moreover, DEP acknowledges that the rise of unconventional drilling in Pennsylvania has significantly impacted the competitiveness of the conventional industry, and that new creative thinking is necessary so that the industry can remain viable.
“However, as we address these challenges, we cannot allow corners to be cut that could contribute to a legacy of environmental degradation.
“As written, the bill presents environmental and public health risks and loosens current environmental protections to the point, in some cases, of nullification.
“For example, the bill promotes well abandonment and improperly well plugging practices that threaten drinking water supplies; the bill substantially weakens the protection of important public resources such as parks and public forests; public health and safety is jeopardized by relaxing casing and cementing standards that protect coal miners; and it lowers standards for restoring polluted water supplies.
“Some other important environmental protection and health and safety standards weakened by the bill include spill reporting and clean-up standards, brine treatment standards, public transparency, and DEP’s environment authority.
“In 2017, the conventional industry was cited for 3,273 violations, while the unconventional industry was cited for 821 violations.
“At a time when the conventional industry is still incurring violations at three to four times the rate of the unconventional industry, a rollback of environmental protections is completely unacceptable.
“The substantive issues outlined herein are merely a fraction of DEP’s concerns. HB 2154 will cause great harm to the environment, and to the public, and we urge members to vote NO on this legislation.
“We want to reiterate yet again that DEP welcomes a dialogue on how we can all work together on new legislation that can more Pennsylvania forward, not backward.”
Click Here for a copy of the letter.
[Note: Violations of DEP regulations by the conventional oil and gas industry have actually tripled over the last 3 years.]
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