Corbett Lifted PA State Forest Drilling Moratorium in Feb 2011

[Missy]

Came across this in two separate sources-one that appears to be a proponent for drilling and the other in the Pittsburgh Business Times.

"PA governor rescinds ban on Marcellus Shale drilling in state forests

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has lifted a policy imposed by his predecessor, Ed Rendell, placing an virtual moratorium on new leasing for natural gas drilling in state forests.

The policy, which into effect in October 2010, required any operators who wanted to drill on public lands to obtain an assessment of environmental impacts from the state Department of Conservation and National Resources (DCNR) before applying for a permit with the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The DCNR would consider: “threatened and endangered species habitat; wildlife corridors; water resources; scenic viewsheds; public recreation areas; wetlands and floodplains; high-value trees and regeneration areas; avoiding steep slopes; pathways for invasive species; air quality; noise; and road placement and construction methods.” Because an earlier DCNR study had concluded that leasing could not occur without damaging the ecological integrity and wild nature of the state forest system, the ruling was effectively a moratorium on new drilling on state land.

The new decision removes the DCNR from the equation. A DEP spokesman said “This [previous ruling], which was not subject to advanced public comment or review, is being rescinded as unnecessary and redundant of existing practice.”

02/28/2011

http://www.worldoil.com/PA_governor_rescinds_ban_on_Marcellus_Shale_drilling_in_state_forests.html

AND (almost identical to the article above w/ this last bit included below)

"The Department is implementing Section 205(c) and will continue to do so. The Department will continue to consider the input of all applicable parties with respect to public resources outlined in Section 205(c).”

Section 205(c) deals with well location restrictions."

http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/blog/energy/2011/02/Marcellus-forest-leasing-moratorium.html?ana=RSS&s=article_search&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bizj_pittsburgh+%28Pittsburgh+Business+Times%29

 

[bikerfish]

we're up #OOPS# creek without a paddle.
honestly, this will turn in to a free-for-all for the gas companies.
our governor has indeed sold us out.
lets see, we'll take dcnr out of the loop, cut back dep to the bare minimum, and let the gas companies destroy our state forests.
I've had enough, I'm sick of this #OOPS#, our state government is full of, well, I think you know.
kiss your state forests goodbye, they are going to drill the hell out of them.
oh, there might be a couple wilderness areas left here and there. the rest will consist holding tanks and pipelines.
bastards!

 

[Missy]

Maybe they'll be attacked by a really p-ssed off group of bears?! One can only hope...

 

[franklin]

bikerfish wrote:
we're up #OOPS# creek without a paddle.
honestly, this will turn in to a free-for-all for the gas companies.
our governor has indeed sold us out.
lets see, we'll take dcnr out of the loop, cut back dep to the bare minimum, and let the gas companies destroy our state forests.
I've had enough, I'm sick of this #OOPS#, our state government is full of, well, I think you know.
kiss your state forests goodbye, they are going to drill the hell out of them.
oh, there might be a couple wilderness areas left here and there. the rest will consist holding tanks and pipelines.
bastards!

Why are we up the creek without a paddle? If you understand the history of the governor's drilling ban on state lands and how 205(c) is applied you will find not much should change. The ban was put into place because by DCNR and DEP standards there was no state land left to drill. The ban was somewhat redundant but a political statement to reinforce that conclusion. Unless there are radical changes in how 205(c) is determined there will not be very many if any new leases added on state land.

 

[Maurice]

franklin wrote:

bikerfish wrote:
we're up #OOPS# creek without a paddle.
honestly, this will turn in to a free-for-all for the gas companies.
our governor has indeed sold us out.
lets see, we'll take dcnr out of the loop, cut back dep to the bare minimum, and let the gas companies destroy our state forests.
I've had enough, I'm sick of this #OOPS#, our state government is full of, well, I think you know.
kiss your state forests goodbye, they are going to drill the hell out of them.
oh, there might be a couple wilderness areas left here and there. the rest will consist holding tanks and pipelines.
bastards!

Why are we up the creek without a paddle? If you understand the history of the governor's drilling ban on state lands and how 205(c) is applied you will find not much should change. The ban was put into place because by DCNR and DEP standards there was no state land left to drill. The ban was somewhat redundant but a political statement to reinforce that conclusion. Unless there are radical changes in how 205(c) is determined there will not be very many if any new leases added on state land.

Foreshadowing? Gee I wonder ahat the next headline will read.

 

[TimMurphy]

Dear Maurice,

They won't need to drill on State Forest land anymore once the State Park land is opened up like Corbett intends to do.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

 

[reds]

The state does not own the majority of mineral rights under state parks anyhow, so if companies want to drill there and own said mineral rights there is little that can be done.

Rescinding this policy only really effected areas of severed mineral rights and extremely old leases. The modern leases gave the DCNR plenty of control over location of wells and every other aspect of drilling.it never placed any sort of moratorium on drilling regarless of what any articles said, simply look at the drilling permits issued during the time the policy was in place.

 

[TimMurphy]

Dear Reds,

I realize that the State doesn't own the mineral rights on much of the Park Land, and I know that creates a problem. I don't want to see or hear a drill rig at Ole Bull, or Lyman Run or even Salt Springs State Park for that matter.

What is legal and what is the right thing to do can be opposite, this is one such example.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

 

[Missy]

Here's your next headline... (I'm so tired of this, but I don't think it's going away anytime soon.)

Corbett repeals policy on gas drilling in parks
Thursday, February 24, 2011
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Gov. Tom Corbett has repealed a 4-month-old policy designed to minimize the environmental impact of Marcellus Shale natural gas well drilling in Pennsylvania's parks.

The policy repeal could hurt recreation and the environment in Ohiopyle State Park and a number of other parks in the western part of the state where oil and gas companies are seeking drilling permits, according to the former director of the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which manages the state's parks and forests.

Notice of the repeal was published last week in the Pennsylvania Bulletin. Michael Krancer, acting secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, and several Corbett spokesmen have termed the policy "unnecessary and redundant."

The DEP notice said the department, which has permitting responsibilities for oil and gas wells, would continue to review and consider comments about drilling on public lands from all interested parties.

Representatives for the two state departments over the past two days referred questions about the policy change to the governor's office.

Ed Shirk, a Corbett spokesman, said well drilling companies are required to mitigate environmental damage wherever they drill and the DCNR "can raise any concerns it has like any private landowner."

But John Quigley, who served as former Gov. Ed Rendell's DCNR secretary, said the repealed policy could have provided important safeguards for managing drilling impacts on many ecologically valuable and vulnerable public park lands.

"The policy wasn't redundant. In fact, quite the opposite situation exists. There are gaping holes in the state's ability and practice of considering well drilling applications on public park and forest lands," Mr. Quigley said. "The policy was just a common-sense approach to mitigating or avoiding any environmental, recreational and aesthetic impacts from the well drilling."

Mr. Quigley said the repeal of the policy could affect how, where and when Marcellus Shale drilling takes place in the state's parks.

"Ohiopyle gets 1 million visitors a year and the recreation opportunities it provides are very important to the economy of the region," he said. "Drilling has been proposed and the question is now how is the state going to manage that?"

Pennsylvania has 117 state parks, 61 of them in the two-thirds of the state lying above the Marcellus Shale, a 380 million-year-old formation that might contain more than 500 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

The mineral rights -- including Marcellus gas deposits -- under 85 percent of that park acreage are privately owned. Courts have ruled that the so-called "mineral estate" rights are superior to surface rights in Pennsylvania, and that the owners of underground mineral rights must be given reasonable access to develop those holdings, even when they lie under parks or other publicly owned land.

Mr. Quigley said the repealed policy required the DCNR to perform an environmental review of the drilling proposal and then negotiate a voluntary mitigation agreement with the drilling company, if possible. If the two sides couldn't reach agreement, the DEP was required to take into account the environmental review findings when issuing a drilling permit.

"It doesn't say DEP can't grant the permit. We thought it would be a positive thing to figure out areas of environmental concern so that we could maintain a balance between getting the gas and protecting the state's park resources," he said. "It's to everyone's advantage not to harm the public lands."

Mark Nicastre, a spokesman with the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, said the decision to end the policy is a payoff to oil and gas industry campaign contributors who donated more than $1 million to Mr. Corbett's election campaign.

"By making it easier for his donors to drill in state parks and forests, Tom Corbett is boosting his donors' profits while leaving Pennsylvanians with great uncertainty about the impact of the drilling," Mr. Nicastre said.

Jeff Schmidt, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club in Harrisburg, said the policy provided a much needed "extra level of scrutiny on drilling proposals for public lands used by millions of Pennsylvanians."

But State Sen. Mary Jo White, R-Venango, chair of the environmental resources and energy committee, issued a statement on Wednesday strongly supporting the governor's repeal. She called the policy "irresponsible" and said it could cost taxpayers "tens of millions of dollars from the impairment of existing [drilling] contracts."

Mr. Quigley said the policy only applied to new drilling permits on state park land, not state forest drilling leases.

Revoking the policy was widely seen as a prelude to Mr. Corbett's previously stated intention to lift a moratorium, imposed by Mr. Rendell in October, on leasing additional state forest land to Marcellus Shale gas drilling. Mr. Shirk said the governor has not decided when he will take that action.

The state has issued leases for a total of 660,000 acres of the state's 2.1 million-acre forest system for both shallow and deep gas and oil drilling. The state owns about 85 percent of the mineral rights under its forests.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11055/1127614-455.stm#ixzz1Fq701Idm

 

[bikerfish]

Missy, I'm tired of all this too, but like you said, it's not going away and will only get much worse. I just attended Dave Sewak's talk at the tu fly fishing show in cranberry, very informative. I'm going to try to attend his coldwater conservation corp seminar near clarion in a couple weeks. to sum it up, he teaches folks how to monitor streams, water temp, quality, etc. TU wants to get a baseline for as many streams as possible, and then continue to monitor as drilling takes place. I'm going to attend and do what I can to save my favorite streams.
it's going to be up to us to enforce things, our agencies can't handle things right now. dave said we have appox 1500 wells operating in the state at this time. in 15 to 20 years there will be 50,000 to 80,000 wells. If our agencies are shorthanded now, how the hell will they be able to deal with things in the future when this really takes off.
people talk of redundancy in enforcing and permitting. with the scale and potential for disaster with this drilling, I say the more redundancy the better. I think the state should have a seperate marcellus shale agency, funded by a TAX and charged with policing this industry, allowing the dcnr and dep to get back to all the other problems they have to deal with.
talking about this on the computer only goes so far, time to get out there and do something about it. there are many programs and groups doing many different things. I urge anyone that gives a hoot about our state to get out there, join up, and do something to make a difference.
sorry to derail from the original thread. as for those that claim that no more drilling will take place in state forests?? yeah right. corbett wants every inch of it available. he will do WHATEVER he has to in order to achieve that. there is a reason he wants dcnr and dep to have less authority and streamline the permit process. he's after the money and that's all there is to it.
one last thing before I grab a beer, right now the law states that mineral rights trump surface rights. laws can be changed. why not fight to get the law changed regarding mineral rights under state park land? lets leave at least a fraction of this state untouched.

 

[mrflyfish]

Dave Sewak's power point would be a great addition to this board or if one of the moderators would interview him about the monitoring that he is proponent for. It seams to me there needs to be a clearing house for information to dissimulate out of.
Is there one?
I too am sick of this and actions do speak louder than words on a fly fishing notice board.

 

[Missy]

Bikerfish,
I agree that posting online at this point is a limited venture. I've written to every politician I can think of but the weather is finally breaking, and we're going to be out there fishing again. Dave and I have been looking at the Mountain Watershed Association and the classes that they offer. My kids even want to get involved in this. So, we are going to learn how to monitor the streams, report the info., and starting this spring, keep watch over all those little unknown streams that we fish for native brookies and the larger streams and rivers. Every spring we take a trip out near Hyner Run, and we've been gearing up to collect data and have our camera in hand.

At work, I monitor the financial transactions of companies for anything suspicious, illegal, or questionable in nature. I've been working on that end as well.

Education, then action. Yeah, I think I'm tired of waiting for the next headline. Time to get to work!

On a side note, of course Dave is VERY excited about all the fishing this entails!

Missy

 

[bikerfish]

mrflyfish, I thought his presentation would also be good for members here to see. some folks here don't belong to TU or any other organization where he does presentations. I'm sure he would be willing to do just such a thing. maybe an eastern and a western. I'll send him an e-mail about this. just like we had out wild trout sandwich meetup, the newbie jams, etc. I'm sure we could get 20 interested members in both the east and western areas that would like to do something but have no other way to get involved. I don't know if my TU chapter is ever going to have him speak, I rarely get any correspondance from them and most of the year I forget they even exist, they really aren't that active. I see lots of tu chapters in my area like that, websites that haven't been updated since '06, that kind of thing.
anyways, I think it would be great if he could do some talks for out group.
Missy and David, keep fighting the good fight!! lots of drilling up near hyner. speaking of which, Dave showed a map of the coming drillpad sites along pine, cedar and slate runs. very disturbing. those streams will be completely surrounded by well pads, with a ton of new roads built to access them. these are sites that already have permits. that area will look completely different in a couple years, the future of those streams could be in jeapardy.

 

[jeff]

Saw Dave Sewak speak as well. I think the biggest thing I took from his presentation was the amount of drilling that we can look forward to in the coming years. It is absolutely staggering. I mean he has a map of Pa with little red dots to show the drilling taking place now and then a map that shows drilling in a few years. The whole map is basically red at that point (besides SE Pa). You are all right about action is better than words. Anything you can do on your own to help monitor this gas development will help.