Well, fracking, well — environmentalists have suffered an
embarrassing loss. Rather than extracting blood, water, and a
couple of limbs from Texas-based Cabot Oil & Gas over
contaminated water supplies in Dimock Township, Pa., the state
Department of Environmental Protection and Secretary John Hanger
have agreed to settle
on an appropriate pound of flesh. For most of this year Hanger
has pushed for the construction of a water line from Lake Montrose
to Dimock at an estimated cost of $12 million,
despite opposition from local officials. The line
would have run about 12.5 miles and remedied the problem for a
whole 18 families — my Commonwealth Foundation colleagues
called it the “Pipeline to Nowhere.” Cabot and others
favored other approaches that would have taken care of the
issue.
But environmental groups like PennFuture, where Hanger used to
ply his trade, tried to make hay over Dimock by falsely linking
their water problems to the alleged dangers of hydraulic fracturing
(“fracking”) — a safe process used for decades — to access shale
gas. Others such as
Sierra Club and
Natural Resources Defense Council similarly weighed in with the
false claims about fracking in Dimock, in their aggressive
campaigns against natural gas exploration. In August PennFuture, in
commenting on a proposed rulemaking,
wrote to the PA Environmental Quality Board:
PennFuture commends the Environmental Hearing Board (the
“Board”) for recognizing the need to update the regulations
governing oil and gas drilling to address challenges posed
by developments in the gas industry, most particularly the
introduction of high-volume hydraulic fracturing and
horizontal drilling to Pennsylvania. Failing to amend Chapter 78 to
meet those challenges will only lead to more disasters like
the ones that occurred at gas wells in Dimock Township,
Susquehanna County, in early 2009, and in Clearfield County on June
3, 2010.
That claim had
earlier been debunked by Hanger’s own director of oil and gas
management, Scott Perry, at a community forum in Luzerne
County:
I will tell you that the Marcellus operators have been building
their wells to exceed our current regulatory standards; they’re
building their wells in a manner that exceeds the [new] standards
that we have actually proposed, in many respects….
First of all, it’s [hydraulic fracturing] standard operating
procedure in Pennsylvania. And it’s important to point out that
we’ve never seen an impact to fresh groundwater directly from
fracking.
A lot of folks relate the situation in Dimock to a fracking
problem. I just want to make sure everyone’ s clear on this - that
it isn’t. What happened in Dimock was that a company was drilling
in the Marcellus, and they encountered a shallow gas producing
formation … which is common in this area of Pennsylvania. It
wasn’t a fracking problem.
Now the media is portraying the settlement as a hit to Cabot —
which it is, as
they are paying significant dollars to Dimock
residents (and to DEP for the cost of investigation). But
the fact is that Hanger is being sent back to Harrisburg with his
tail between his legs after he’s now abandoned his absurdly
excessive idea to address the Dimock water problem. Sure,
not everyone is happy with the resolution, but at least
residents probably would have seen their money sooner had Hanger
not held out for so long. All so environmental extremists could
extract their political points.
