PA Environment Digest Blog: Part II - 500 Feet Isn’t Enough: 42 Scientific Studies, 20+ Years Of Experience With Shale Gas Drilling In PA; A State Grand Jury Report; Criminal Convictions; Public Complaints; Lawsuits; Media Reports All Document The Need To Increase Setbacks From Shale Gas Wells

The Protective Buffers PA Coalition is asking the public to urge the Environmental Quality Board to take action on a rulemaking petition to increase the minimum setbacks from shale natural gas wells from 500 feet to 3,281 feet.

The petition has been pending at the Board since October 2024 with no action.

The Coalition held a webinar September 24 that included a summary of the petition, the scientific studies it is based on and presentations by people in communities who have first-hand experiences with the negative impacts from shale gas operations.

Below is a summary of the information presented during the webinar.

Click Here to read Michelle Stonemark’s story about her family’s experiences living 500 feet away from a shale gas well pad in Cecil Township, Washington County.

Click Here to watch the September 24 webinar on demand.

Take Action Now

The next scheduled meeting of the Environmental Quality Board is October 14.

Click Here to urge the Environmental Quality Board to act.

The Petition

In October 2024, the Clean Air Council and the Environmental Integrity Project submitted a 358-page rulemaking petition to the state Environmental Quality Board to increase the minimum setbacks from shale gas wells from 500 feet to 3,281 feet from buildings, 5,280 feet from schools, daycare centers, hospitals and 750 feet from surface water. Read more here.

The Environmental Quality Board is a 20 member board given the authority to adopt regulations for the Department of Environmental Protection and chaired by DEP.

Members include 10 other related state agencies, four members of the state Senate and House and five members from DEP’s Citizens Advisory Council.

The setback distance recommendations were based on 42 independent, peer-reviewed scientific studies that documented links between shale gas development and health impacts in children and adults.

The recommendations were also based on over 20 years of shale gas drilling experiences reported by individuals and communities living around these facilities in Pennsylvania.

These experiences were documented extensively in media reporting, conferences, workshops, complaints filed with the departments of Health and Environmental Protection, local officials, lawsuits and in the 43rd state Grand Jury report and in criminal convictions by the state Office of Attorney General. Read more here.

In November, 2024, DEP announced it had determined the petition meets the initial criteria to be considered by the Environmental Quality Board for study, including that the Board does have the statutory authority to adopt a regulation setting more protective setbacks from shale gas wells.

In March, 2025, DEP said it would recommend the Board accept the petition for study, but at the same time said, “the recommendation does not infer a rulemaking ultimately will be developed.” Read more here.

On April 8, 2025, the makers of the petition gave a five minute presentation to the Environmental Quality Board summarizing the petition, scientific foundations and describing the authority the Board has to adopt the recommended setback distances.

After the presentation, the Board voted 16 to 3 to table the vote on whether to accept the petition for study based on last minute information submitted to the Board by the shale gas industry. Read more here.

Action on the petition remains tabled at the Environmental Quality Board. Read more here.

The 5-Minute Pitch

Lisa Hallowell, Senior Attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project, repeated the presentation she made on the petition before the Board in April.

Click Here for the presentation slides.

Here are her remarks--

This petition for rulemaking requests greater protective buffers from new, unconventional or fracking sites to people's homes, drinking wells, waterways, hospitals, daycares, and schools.

Since 2012, 42 independent peer-reviewed studies have shown that fracking at current setback distances has caused dangerous impacts to health and the environment, due to releases of benzene and other fracking pollutants.

This proposed regulation is narrowly drafted. It does not seek to ban fracking or relocate existing sites. It only applies to new unconventional oil and gas wells and sets common sense data-driven protective buffers.

This is a screenshot taken through a bedroom window in Washington County, Pennsylvania. [Slide #14]

Imagine that this was your home.

At its core, this petition is about the state ensuring that Pennsylvanians can feel safe in their homes and in this Commonwealth we share.

Would you feel assured your health was protected here?

For most Pennsylvanians, their home is the biggest investment they will make.

EQB has a mandate to protect the safety and property rights of persons residing in areas where fracking occurs.

This is a daycare approximately 1,046 feet from an unconventional well site.

If you left your toddler here all day, every day, would you feel assured their health was protected? [Slide #15]

Statutory Authority For Change

Nothing in the Oil and Gas Act states that the current setbacks are a maximum, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has stated that Section 3215 [of the 2012 Oil and Gas Act], which includes the current setbacks, permits agencies to go further.

Industry's claim that this [Environmental Quality] Board lacks authority to act on this position is not supported by the law.

The [state] Oil and Gas Act, the Clean Streams Law and the Air Pollution Control Act give EQB the authority and mandate to promulgate regulations to protect health in the environment.

The agency's duties under the Pennsylvania Constitution to protect and conserve Pennsylvania resources further bolster this authority.

The setbacks requested are a common sense step to better protect Pennsylvanians.

This petition recommends data-supported minimum setbacks from new fracking wells.

What we are asking for are setbacks of 3,281 feet from any building or drinking water well, which is one kilometer, 5,280 feet from the property boundary of any building serving vulnerable populations, which includes schools, daycares, and hospitals.

And that's one mile and 750 feet from any surface water of the Commonwealth, because there are no current setbacks required from surface waters, even though a lot of spills occur at sites like this.

Peer-Reviewed Studies

Forty-two independent peer-reviewed studies show serious health impacts at current setback distances. I urge you to read through our petition and Attachment C of the petition for a summary of the health effects observed as well as the studies themselves to understand the gravity of the harms caused by fracking current setback distances.

These harms that have been documented are vast, including infant mortality, respiratory and neurological ailments and rare childhood cancers.

Study after study show that the closer people and water wells are to fracking sites, the worse the documented harm has been.

Current Setback Has No Basis In Science

The state relied upon DEP's Southwest short-term air studies in setting the current setbacks.

But DEP itself has stated in legal filings that these studies did not analyze cancer risks, did not involve any public health officials, and only monitored for less than one week.

The DEP's air chief admitted that the studies were designed to serve as planning tools, not standards to protect public health.

DEP also admitted the studies did not make the conclusion as to whether fracking emissions were safe or unsafe and failed to analyze long-term effects, cumulative effects, or more than a few of the many fracking pollutants.

DEP's 2018 air studies were assessed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which further found that the data was insufficient for assessing emissions impacts.

The monitoring locations did not capture downwind air quality data, and they omitted study of known fracking chemicals and did not have usable data.

We submitted to the EQB a report by senior scientist Mark Glass of Downstream Strategies that analyzes the limitations of using DEP's air studies for long-term health assessments or statewide setback distances.

This, in tandem with DEP's own admissions regarding the inappropriateness of using the earlier short-term air studies for public health decisions and industry's failure to show that the current setbacks are protective, show the need for EQB and DEP to rely on the recent peer-reviewed studies provided to set health-driven protective buffers.

Industry Has No Evidence

The Marcellus Shale Coalition right before we made this presentation attempted to submit some documents to the EQB to try to debunk our peer-reviewed scientific studies.

So, I just wanted to say a quick word that despite their submission, they didn't cite any studies, and they provided a link that claims that there are other studies that demonstrate that there's little, if any, impact to public health from fracking at the current setbacks.

But the link they provided was broken. [Slide #23]

You can see that I took a screenshot of it here. There was no data there. There was no there there.

Once we located some of what we thought they might be talking about on the Marcellus Shale Coalition's website, we found unauthored blog posts that were being cited as opposed to peer-reviewed studies and other data and information that was riddled with shortcomings.

For example, one study claiming to analyze potential exposures to a school did not put air monitoring stations downwind of the well pad or near the school.

And the letter from the Marcellus Shale Coalition also did not identify a single discreet concern with any of the 42 studies we submitted with our petition.

New Setbacks Will Not Stop Fracking

I wanted to also mention that this rule will not stop fracking.

Don't believe the false narrative that protective buffers would ban fracking.

It would move new fracking sites outside of people's backyards and further away from water wells.

Industry has been drilling five-mile laterals in practice. So requiring new fracking wells to be one kilometer from buildings 750 feet from streams or even one mile from schools and hospitals, is well within their abilities and usual practices and will not infringe on their ability to reach the gas they seek to extract.

Also, this rule wouldn't apply to existing wells. Here's a map. [Slide #25]

It's a little hard to see, a map of permitted fracking wells in a portion of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Just to drive that point home, this is how many wells that are already there that would not be affected by this petition.

Public Supports Common Sense Setbacks

Furthermore, Pennsylvanians want these common sense setbacks.

We submitted a letter from 28 Pennsylvania health and environmental groups and there are hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania members supporting this petition.

We also submitted petitions signed by over 2,500 Pennsylvanians, demanding these protective buffers.

This petition for rulemaking meets all the requirements under the board's regulations for moving forward. 42 independent peer-reviewed scientific studies show that fracking at current setbacks harms Pennsylvanians.

The board has a statutory mandate to protect health in the environment and the time to act is now.

Thank you.

Click Here for the presentation slides.

Click Here to watch the September 24 webinar on demand.

Take Action Now

The next scheduled meeting of the Environmental Quality Board is October 14.

Click Here to urge the Environmental Quality Board to act.

Click Here to read Michelle Stonemark’s story about her family’s experiences living 500 feet away from a shale gas well pad in Cecil Township, Washington County.

Visit the Protective Buffers PA Coalition website for more information.

(Photos: Row 1-- Seeing a shale gas well pad flare 700 and 500 feet away from your home; Well pad within 3,920 feet of a school playground; Row 2- Health impacts by distance from well pads, according to scientific studies.)

NewsClips:

-- Freeport Township Declares Disaster Emergency After Residents Impacted By A Gas Related Water Contamination Event Have Been Without Permanent Water Supplies For 3 Years-- We’re Not Blaming Anybody, We Just Want Good, Clean Drinking Water [August 2025]

-- Springhill Township Becomes 2nd Township To Declare Disaster Emergency After Residents Were Impacted By A Gas Related Water Contamination Event In Greene County [August 2025]

-- Observer-Reporter: Study Shows Probable Link Between Freeport Twp. Water Well Contamination And Fracking In Greene County [PDF of Article]

-- Independent Research Study By Pitt, Duquesne Ties Water Well Contamination To Shale Gas Drilling In 2 Greene County Townships That Declared Water Disaster Emergencies [9.17.25]

-- PA American Water Identifies Water Source For New Public Water System To Replace Water Wells Contaminated By Shale Gas Fracking 20 Years Ago In Dimock Twp., Susquehanna County [3.13.25]

-- Coterra Energy Fined $299,000 For Contaminating 13 Private Water Supplies In Lenox Twp., Susquehanna County - Just A Few Miles From Dimock [7.29.25]

-- 3 Days That Shook Washington County: Natural Gas Plant Explosion; Pipeline Leak Of 1.1 Million Cubic Feet Of Gas; 10,000 Gallon Spill At Compressor Station [6.20.23]

-- KDKA: Natural Gas Gathering Pipeline Crashes Into, Thru Westmoreland County Home And A Loophole In State Law That Doesn’t Regulate Gathering Pipelines For Safety [9.5.23]

-- Natural Gas Pipeline Pigging Facility Malfunction Dec. 27 Released 1.1 Million Cubic Feet Of Natural Gas; Same Facility Plagued Community With Blowdowns 3 Times A Day, 7 Days A Week For Nearly 10 Years Until Criminal Charges Brought Against CNX [PaEN]

-- Environmental Hearing Board Agrees There Is ‘Acute’ Danger In CNX Misusing A Deposition In An Appeal Before The Board To ‘Punish’ An Environmental Advocate For Her Advocacy Against CNX [PaEN]

-- On Feb. 13 Dept. Of Health, Penn State Project ECHO Held A Webinar To Educate Medical Professionals, Public On Exposures To Natural Gas Facility Pollution; Real Washington County CNX Facility Case Study Used [PaEN]