PA Environment Digest Blog: Guest Essay: The Real Waste In Pennsylvania Government - Criticizing The Right Of Citizens To Petition Their Government For Change

By Terrie Baumgardner, Resident Of Aliquippa, Clean Air Council Outreach Coordinator

The guest essay was originally published in the Beaver Times on April 4, 2025--

In a remarkable moment at the Feb. 27 House budget hearing for Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, state Rep. Josh Kail (R-Brighton Township, Beaver County) declared it “outrageous” that citizens, including his constituents, have the right to petition DEP for a change in environmental rules.

Acting Secretary Jessica Shirley explained that DEP’s “rulemaking” process allows everyday people to ask for a new rule or repeal an existing one.

And if a citizen’s petition is backed by scientific data, it can merit review by the DEP’s rulemaking body, the Environmental Quality Board.

Shirley also explained that EQB’s review includes legislative touch points and consent, as well as legislators among its members.

Evidently. too fixated on degrading the democratic process to listen, Kail then delivered a textbook non sequitur, stating that since DEP rulemaking includes “absolutely no legislative input,” the agency’s time spent in rulemaking is “wasted.”

His claim is both erroneous and authoritarian.

Kail’s performance red-flags whether he understands or even cares what a legislator’s job requires under our constitution.

How can any legislator call listening to everyday citizens a waste of time when the heart of being a legislator is to hear and represent constituents’ needs?

More so, why would any legislator be outraged (or even pretend to be, as Kail’s thespian muscle-flexing suggested) at a lawful, 40-year-old process designed to ensure public input – a process our Legislature wrote and passed and understood to be protected by the First Amendment?

Then comes the biggest question of all: Do we – as a country of, by, and for the People – continue to elect legislators who want to take power from us?

Or do we refuse to elect legislators who call our voices a “waste?”

That Kail tried to shame the DEP for working with the People to create regulations is in itself shameful.

[3 Petitions Were Targeted]

Under the pretense that time spent addressing the People’s petitions is fiscal squandering, Kail named three such petitions to exemplify his point: One for joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), one for increasing security bonds for oil and gas wells, and one for establishing mandatory set-backs for oil and gas wells.

Given that all three petitions would bring hundreds of millions in income and savings to Pennsylvania, characterizing time spent on them as fiscally irresponsible is a farce.

If Kail actually listened to the People, his feigned fiscal concerns would be relieved.

[Carbon Pollution Reduction]

Although the RGGI matter started from a rulemaking petition, when Gov. Tom Wolf signed an executive order requiring DEP to join RGGI, the petition was set aside.

But this cap-and-trade program of CO2 [carbon dioxide] would have brought in an estimated $443 million in income to be spent only on clean air initiatives such as monitoring and constraining polluting facilities. [Read more here]

If Kail could imagine how much his constituents, who are plagued by carcinogenic emissions from thousands of oil wells, need DEP to step up and protect them, he might be able to help legislate the funding DEP needs to do so.

Or is that funding a waste?

[Increase Oil & Gas Well Plugging Bonds]

The well-bonding petition asked oil and gas companies to post higher bonds before drilling a well. [Read more here]

The current bond amount is $2,500, which creates zero incentive for companies to plug wells at a cost of about tens of thousands of dollars per well.

It’s a business no-brainer to default on the bond, rather than spend twenty times more to plug a well.

So that defaulting leaves Pennsylvanians with the public health and environmental wreckage, while taxing them for the massive cost of plugging up to hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells.

While Pennsylvania is currently fighting for $300 million in federal funding to plug wells, the People’s well bonding petition simply proposed raising bonds to about $38,000.

Is such a proposal really a waste?

[Increasing Setbacks From Shale Gas Wells]

Finally, the setbacks petition seeks a common-sense mandate that oil and gas wells not be built too close to waterways and buildings. [Read more here]

Currently, health-harming wells can be and are built only 500 feet from buildings such as schools and hospitals.

Instead, this People’s petition asked DEP to base these distances on scientific research by requiring--

-- Set-backs of 5,280 ft from any building “serving the vulnerable” (schools, hospitals).

-- Set-backs of 3,281 ft from any building or drinking water well.

-- Setbacks of 750 ft from any waterway.

Is Kail saying that protecting our children, our elderly, our infirm, is a waste?

Is protecting our drinking water a waste?

Any citizen who values their voice should scorn Kail’s disingenuous performance on Feb. 27 and his audacious inclination to snatch away our power to develop and shape regulations.

The right to hold Kail accountable rests especially with the People of his 15th District, which includes Shell’s massive pollution-spewing plastics plant, along with half of Washington County – the most fracked county in Pennsylvania.

The real waste in our state government is not time spent on the DEP rulemaking process.

It’s time spent by lobbied legislators in selling out the government of, by, and for the People to the petrochemical industry.

Terrie Baumgardner is a resident of Aliquippa and Clean Air Council’s Outreach Coordinator for Beaver County.

(Photos: Rows 1-2: Cecil Twp., Washington County shale gas development; Row 3- abandoned conventional gas well on fire; Shell Petrochemical Plant dirty flare in Beaver County.)

Resource Links:

-- Beaver Times Guest Essay: The Real Waste In Pennsylvania Government - By Terrie Baumgardner, Clean Air Council

-- House DEP Budget Hearing: Republican Rep. Kail Says It Is ‘Outrageous’ DEP Has A Process Where Citizens Can Petition Their Government For Changes In Regulations [PaEN]

PA Oil & Gas Industry Public Notice Dashboards:

-- PA Oil & Gas Weekly Compliance Dashboard - March 29 to April 4 - Failed To Restore 3MG Water Impoundment; Failed To Get Pipeline Permits; Nearly 7 Years Without Conventional Well Spill Cleanup [PaEN]

-- DEP: Shale Gas Driller Failed To Restore 3 Million Gallon Water Impoundment, Well Site For Nearly 8 Years In Clinton County [PaEN]

-- DEP: Nearly 7 Year Struggle Continues To Cleanup Multiple Conventional Oil Well Spills At Site In Economy Borough, Beaver County [PaEN]

-- PA Oil & Gas Industrial Facilities: Permit Notices, Opportunities To Comment - April 5 [PaEN]

-- EPA To Hold May 6 Virtual Hearing [If Requested] On Proposed Permit For A Sandstone Development Oil & Gas Wastewater Injection Well In Lafayette Twp., McKean County [PaEN]

-- Environmental Quality Board Invites Comments On Spill Notification Regulation Changes; May 15 Virtual Hearing [PaEN]

-- Susquehanna River Basin Commission April 24 Hearing On Water Withdrawal Requests, Including Renewal Of 2 Shale Gas Water Projects [PaEN]

-- DEP To Use General Permit To Implement New Federal Oil & Gas Facility Methane Reduction Regulation [PaEN]