Republicans need to explain why they won’t support the Marcellus Compact

Yesterday, six House Democrats introduced bills that they call the Marcellus Compact aimed at addressing the most egregious shortcomings of Act 13, the dreadful drilling bill.

·       Minority leader Rep. Frank Dermody (D-Allegheny) introduced HB 2412 that would restore the ability of local governments to manage the impacts of drilling in their communities through zoning ordinances;

·       Democratic Whip Rep. Mike Hanna (D-Clinton/Centre) introduced HB 2413 that would significantly raise the impact fee on the extraction of natural gas;

·       Rep. Santarsiero (D-Bucks) introduced HB 2414 that would double the bonding requirement for gas wells, increase the setbacks from wells and water resources and repeal Act 13’s requirement that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) must grant variances to setbacks;

·       Rep. Matt Bradford (D-Montgomery) introduced HB 2415 that would ensure physicians have access to information about toxic chemicals used in fracking that their patients have been exposed to and allow them to share that information with the patient and other medical professionals;

·       Rep. Phyllis Mundy (D-Luzerne) introduced HB 2416 that would put a moratorium on dumping gas well wastewater into streams, prohibit drilling in floodplains, create an online cradle-to-grave tracking system for gas well wastewater, requires drillers to get permits to control soil erosion at wells and require DEP, the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Fish and Boat Commission to study the overall statewide impacts of current and future drilling.

The Republicans who control the House have no appetite for revisiting Marcellus bills for the rest of this session. They hope the issues, with few exceptions, are settled. And they will simply bottle the bills up because they can – there will not even be committee hearings on these bills. House Democrats tried to raise most of these issues and force votes on them during the debate over Act 13, but Republican leaders would not allow the debate or uncomfortable votes.

Given the certainty that these bills will never see the light of day in this session of the General Assembly, why should Democrats go through the motions? One practical reason is that these bills will be ready to be offered as amendments on related legislation providing another opportunity for debate or for the Republicans to demonstrate once again their unwillingness to even engage in thoughtful consideration of the merits of these bills. But the more important reasons are to continue to articulate a pointed critique of the awful shortcomings of Act 13 and to offer sound alternatives that would better protect natural resources, public health and communities from the negative effects of gas drilling.

Since the Republicans won’t bring up the Marcellus Compact bills, they need to answer these questions; why take away local control over gas drilling impacts; why have one of the lowest extraction taxes in the country; why allow gas drilling too near water supplies and in floodplains; why keep vital information from doctors and patients exposed to toxic drilling chemicals; why not allow the public to find out what drillers are doing with their wastewater?

Voters will be waiting for answers to these questions in November.

Corbett kitchen cabinet - change the recipe, not the cooks

Today Governor Corbett will meet with a “kitchen cabinet” of worried Republican advisors. According to several press accounts, including a front page article in yesterday’s Patriot News, they will confront the governor with their concerns over his job performance. Only 37 percent of voters think he’s doing a good job.

According to the Patriot, the performance review will focus on three things: the governor’s lack of political savvy; the governor’s deplorable relationship with the Republican-controlled legislature; and, the governor’s inability to communicate effectively with the public. The advisors will be looking for the governor to improve those shortcomings primarily with changes in his staff.

They will be missing the point. It’s not the cooks that need to change, it’s the recipe. Pennsylvanians are turning up their noses at the policies that are coming out of the governor’s office. That the governor cannot articulate rationales for those policies or that he cannot work with the legislature only make the policy dishes, taken straight out of the extreme right-wing cookbook more unpalatable.

Pennsylvanians are rejecting Corbett’s war on public education, and they are directly feeling the pain of that war. Taxpayers all across the state are watching in dismay as their school districts fire teachers, cut kindergarten, art, music and athletics all the while their property taxes rise. They contrast that with Corbett’s unstinting support for sending taxpayer money to private schools, including the clearly deficient cyber schools. They watch the gas drillers skate away with one of the lowest extraction taxes in the country as cuts in basic human services threaten the very lives of our most vulnerable citizens. They wonder where commonsense went when they watch the governor take his orders about raising taxes from Grover Norquist, a right-wing Washington, DC lobbyist. And women everywhere, including many in his own party, cringed when he told them to “just close their eyes” if forced to undergo an unnecessary ultrasound. 

All of these policies are straight out of the Republican right-wing cookbook which is supposed to ensure the party stays in power. But in a state where voters are independent and centrist, these recipes for Republican success are deeply unpopular. 

I doubt the “kitchen cabinet” will urge the governor to abandon Grover Norquist, tax the drillers, restore funding for education and basic human services because they are all cooking out of the same recipe book. Changing the cooks will not change what’s coming out of the kitchen – they need to change those recipes.

Republican double-speak on energy subsidies

Yesterday, President Obama was at an Iowa wind turbine manufacturing plant urging Congress to extend the production tax credit (PTC) for wind energy. Meanwhile, Republican members of Congress were on their own tour bashing environmental regulations and complaining that tax credits for renewable energy amount to “picking winners and losers” while at the same time defending robust subsidies for fossil fuels.  

Republican members of the House Energy Action Team have split personalities when it comes to energy subsidies. Two Congressmen’s statements at the same event yesterday reveal how much they like taxpayer help for fossil fuels and resent that help for renewables. When asked about the president’s call for an extension of the PTC, Congressman Francisco "Quico" Canseco said, "The president is picking winners and losers," he said.” I don't begrudge wind farms -- there's one in my district, in Pecos County, that sells 160 megawatts into the grid. But we don't just need wind farms.” 

Meanwhile, his colleague, Congressman Mike Conway, recounted how he impressed on House Speaker John Boehner the importance of the incidental drilling cost tax credit to the natural gas drilling industry. Conway brought Boehner down to a Texas drilling site "so he would know that, when we talk about intangible drilling costs, that floorhand making a connection has his salary, the cost of running that rig, is paid through IDCs. The cost of the frac job we saw this morning, operators can immediately deduct those costs and that reduces their tax bill." 

Mitt Romney apparently shares the Republican resentment of subsidies for renewable energy and the wholehearted love of subsidies for fossil fuels. If elected president, Romney would seek to end subsidies for wind and solar power. Solar and wind he says, “make little sense for the consuming public but great sense only for the companies reaping profits from taxpayer subsidies.”

President Obama is focused on preserving the 37,000 jobs in the wind industry, including the 4,000 of them that are here in Pennsylvania. The PTC helps wind compete against the highly subsidized power generated by coal, gas and nuclear power. As the amount of clean energy from wind grows – in Iowa it generates 20 percent of the state’s electricity – fossil fuel interests get nervous as they watch wind eat into their market shares. 

Wind, solar and natural gas should be teammates in a coherent energy policy that moves the country toward a cleaner, lower carbon future. The PTC is a no-brainer for jobs, the environment and reliable energy supply. The president gets it. Too bad Romney remains stuck in Republican double-speak ideology that subsidies are good for fossil fuels but bad for renewables.

Follow-up - the pollution permit shopping act

Yesterday I wrote about a really, really bad bill that was up for a House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee vote yesterday. House Bill 1659 would allow polluters to shop around to find private consultants to do reviews for their pollution control permits.  

Well, the committee did indeed consider the bill. The committee adopted an amendment offered by Rep. Evankovich (R-Armstrong/Westmoreland) that took out the specific language about the private permit contractors but inserted requiring DEP to “implement a plan to use qualified non-departmental employees…to enhance the timeliness and effectiveness of the permit review process…” Rep. Vitali (D-Delaware) distributed amendments that he says he will offer on the floor if and when the bill gets there.

The bill is still a stinker. It still sets up a pollution permit shopping mall; it still has tight deadlines for permit reviews and still requires DEP to automatically approve permit applications if it does not meet the deadlines.

The committee approved the bill on an 18 to 5 vote. This is one bill that should be buried. However, if it lives and gets to the floor, it should be defeated.

Bringing a knife to a gunfight

Remember that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones faces off against a fierce-looking Arab who is wielding a nasty-looking saber and advancing toward Indiana, and then Indiana coolly pulls a gun and just shoots the guy? Well, never bring a knife to a gunfight.

But that’s essentially what the environmental community did in its face-off with the gas drilling industry in fight over House Bill 1950 which is now Act 13, the dreadful drilling bill.  John Micek reports in Capitol Ideas that the drillers spent a whopping $1.3 million lobbying the state legislature during the first quarter of 2012 when the debate over the severance tax, local control and environmental protections was at its height. The environmental community spent $51,484. For every lobbying dollar the environmental groups put on the table, the drillers laid down $25.

Theoretically, effective organizing can out-maneuver money. The Capitol Ideas piece has this analysis “The lopsided totals also work to the environmentalists’ advantage because they “can use them to portray how uneven the playing field is,” said Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown. “It’s hard, when you’re so vastly outspent, to be able to provide the same influence,” he said. “But it’s not impossible if you have good arguments and can leverage your resources to get the public to line up in agreement with you.”

That really didn’t work out for them. The environmental community did a great job of getting its message out – polls taken at the time showed that around 70 percent of the voters supported a severance tax. Most of the lobbying done by the environmental groups was “indirect” lobbying – appeals to their members and the public to contact their legislators and urge support for the tax and greater environmental protection and opposition to removing local control over drilling. The public responded, and legislators were inundated with communications from their constituents supporting the environmental positions.

The hard, cold reality of cash trumped political theory in this case, as it usually does. All of this lobbying is perfectly legal, and the industry can spend all it wants to on lobbying. Most of the environmental groups, on the other hand, are constrained by IRS rules which limit their ability to lobby. They can spend only a small percentage of their resources on lobbying and their ability to do grassroots lobbying is especially restricted. The groups that can do unlimited lobbying do not have near the resources to effectively counter massive spending by the other side.

Of course, voters can do the most effective persuasion at the ballot box. But will they? Will any legislator lose his or her seat over a vote in favor of HB 1950? The drilling industry right now is betting that won’t happen and generously supplying its legislative supporters with campaign cash to keep them in office. Voters who didn’t like their legislators’ vote on the dreadful drilling bill can counter that money by touching the other candidate’s button on the ballot screen in November.

That’s the one message legislators will appreciate better than the lobbying money and campaign cash.

The pollution permit shopping act

On Wednesday, the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee will consider a bill that would allow polluters to shop for private reviews of pollution control permits. Reviewing applications for pollution permits is an essential public service. Experts employed by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) review applications for all kinds of permits including air and water pollution control, waste disposal and gas drilling. Their reviews ensure that the permit requirements protect natural resources and public health and comply with state and federal law.

That would all change if the bill, House Bill 1659, became law. The bill would require extremely speedy review of pollution permits that could even be further curtailed if an applicant asks for a quicker decision. If DEP doesn’t meet either the deadlines in the bill or the extra fast review requested by an applicant, the permit would automatically be granted regardless of whether or not it was adequately protective.

But that’s not all. The bill would also allow polluters to choose to have their permit applications reviewed by a private consultant rather than by DEP employees. And the bill forces DEP to accept the decision to grant a permit that has been OK’d by a consultant.

This attempt to create a private permit review marketplace is a stunningly horrible idea. A provision to allow private consultants to review gas drilling permits was dropped from HB 1950 after strenuous objections from the environmental community and attention from the media. Throwing all permits out to private consultants is even worse and should be rejected.

Reviewing pollution permits is a key function of government which is required by law to do that work in the public interest, not in the interest of the polluter applicants. A private market for permit reviews would allow applicants to shop for the consultants who would provide the fastest reviews and Oks for their permits. The applicant, not the public, would be the client of a private permit reviewer. And DEP would be bound to accept the consultants’ decisions.

Setting up a pollution permit shopping mall is no way to guarantee the public’s right to clean air and pure water that the Pennsylvania Constitution requires. This bill should be roundly rejected.  

Governor Corbett should go to bat for wind power

Earlier this year, Governor Corbett quietly and effectively lured the Shell Chemical ethane cracker plant to Beaver County, Pennsylvania.  The plant will use ethane, a component of the “wet” natural gas produced in southwestern Pennsylvania to make ethylene out of which everything from pantyhose to tires can be made. The plant will create thousands of jobs and boost the economy of southwestern Pennsylvania.

The governor used a mix of incentives, including designating the site as a Keystone Opportunity Zone and granting Shell a 15-year tax exemption worth tens of millions of dollars to win the Shell plant over competitors West Virginia and Ohio. He also threw in a tour of the Pittsburgh Steelers locker room for Shell executives.

Yesterday, Iberdrola announced that it was cancelling two large wind projects because of uncertainty over the extension of the federal production tax credit (PTC) for wind power which expires at the end of this year. That leaves the entire wind industry on the brink. Not only is new wind project construction at risk, but the robust supply chain for wind components would be hit hard by Congress’ failure to extend the PTC. In Pennsylvania that puts about 4,000 good paying manufacturing and construction jobs at risk.

Governor Corbett should go to bat for the wind industry and those jobs and use his considerable influence to lobby the Pennsylvania Congressional delegation to actively support the extension of the PTC for wind energy. The majority of our representatives in Congress are the governor’s fellow Republicans and should also be focused on preserving and creating jobs in all industry sectors.

The governor’s style is to operate under the radar until he strikes a deal. We can only hope that he right now is quietly using his influence to preserve those 4,000 Pennsylvania jobs. In the wake of yesterday’s announcement of the cancellation of two major wind projects, it would be helpful to hear the governor publicly support Pennsylvania wind and vigorously make the case for the extension of the PTC.

Clean energy on the brink - wind projects cancelled

Only the Koch brothers, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and anti-wind zealots could be happy after reading today’s front page story in the Post-Gazette about Iberdrola’s cancellation of two big wind energy projects planned for Bedford and Clearfield counties. The company cancelled the two projects because a key wind energy incentive, the production tax credit (PTC), will expire at the end of this year. This incentive, key to the industry’s ability to attract project financing, provides 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity produced by wind power.

Congress has twice allowed the PTC to lapse only to reinstate it. Each time the credit expired, it disrupted the wind industry, halting projects and manufacturing of the components of wind turbines. President Obama has proposed making the PTC permanent, but so far Congress has failed to act on it.

Wind energy can be a significant part of our energy portfolio. As John Hanger reports in his excellent blog, five states now get 10 percent of their electricity supply from wind. Wind also enhances the reliability of the electricity supply. In Texas, wind power helped keep the lights on twice during emergencies– once during an exceptionally long and bitter cold snap and again in the midst of a brutal heat wave and drought. Both events caused electricity demand to skyrocket and fossil-fuel plants to breakdown under the stress. Pennsylvania’s 17 wind farms produce enough electricity to power about a quarter million homes, but still provide only about 1 percent of our electricity needs. However, the National Renewable Energy Lab estimates that Pennsylvania wind could provide about 6 percent of our electricity supply if fully developed.

If Congress fails to extend the PTC before it expires, the Koch brothers and other fossil-fuel enemies of clean energy will have won an important battle in their nutty fact-free right-wing Republican war against renewable energy.  If renewable energy loses this battle, it must double its efforts to win the overall war. The stakes could not be higher. Continued reliance on dirty fossil fuels exposes all of us to energy insecurity, harms future economic development and, most of all, destabilizes our climate.

Climate change is the greatest environmental challenge humankind has ever faced. Widespread deployment of wind power is a key to a clean energy future that we must get to in order to leave our children a stable, prosperous economy and a livable environment. No form of energy production, including wind and solar power, has zero impact on the environment. But wind energy’s benefits overwhelm its environmental drawbacks. It is irresponsible for environmental advocates to oppose wind development. Laura Jackson, quoted in the Posts-Gazette piece as being “happy” with the cancellation of the two wind projects, was at a meeting, also attended by representatives from ALEC, where organizers laid out a plot to kill wind energy development in the United States.

Wind energy is on the brink. Without the renewal of the PTC, wind energy development will be set back for years. For all of our sakes, wind energy needs to survive and thrive. Let’s hope President Obama’s effort to renew the PTC succeeds and the war against renewables fails.

You can help win the war. Buy PA wind. It’s easy.

Ohio Gov wants to RAISE severance tax, regulate drillers

What in the world is going on in Ohio? Conservative Republican Governor John Kaisch wants to raise, yes, I said raise his state’s severance tax on the extraction of natural gas and gas liquids. Ohio’s current severance tax is an embarrassing 3 cents per thousand cubic feet of gas extracted. Kaisch wants to levy a 1.5 percent tax for the first year of a well’s production and 4 percent after one year. The governor proposes using the revenue generated from the tax to cut the state’s income tax.

 Kaisch said at an energy summit, "I don't want all this money to escape Ohio, and our severance tax is going to be at a level that will allow us to be very competitive and it will allow us to reduce our income tax in the state and benefit all families."

Not surprisingly the public supports raising the severance tax and cutting the income tax by an overwhelming majority – 60 to 32 percent – according to a Quinnipiac University poll  release last week. And predictably the oil and gas industries oppose raising the tax – and Kaisch’s response to that - "Special interests have a different point of view than I have on this.”

He is also proposing to toughen regulations on gas drilling, updating well construction standards, requiring the industry to disclose the chemicals used in fracking and regulating and imposing safety standards on natural gas gathering pipelines.  He told an audience of industry representatives that stonewalling on regulations wouldn’t work, “If you try to jam this down people’s throats, you’ll fail.” And he threatened to stop issuing gas drilling permits until the regulations are in place.

Kaisch has also acknowledged that “there’s a problem with the climates….I believe it.” He has proposed a comprehensive energy plan based on 10 pillars which includes creating new financial incentives for renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Kaisch’s new-found moderation is likely motivated by a stinging rebuke voters handed him in November. They voted to repeal legislation passed by the Ohio legislature and championed by the governor that limited public union collective bargaining rights – by a huge margin – 61 percent to 38 percent.

The Ohio governor’s behavior and scurry toward the center of the political spectrum stands in stark contrast to Governor Corbett who seems to be oblivious to public opinion. Voters are now confronting the fallout of his refusal to support a reasonable severance tax and the cuts to basic education funding in the form of teacher layoffs, program cuts and higher property taxes. The Pennsylvania Senate refused to tolerate more cuts to state universities. Only 39 percent of voters approve of the governor’s job performance.

Governor Corbett has bet Pennsylvania’s economic and energy future solely on developing our shale gas. While there is a lot to debate about in Kaisch’s energy policy at least he has given it serious thought and included assistance for renewables and energy efficiency.

If Governor Corbett does not expand his vision for Pennsylvania, voters may reject his single-issue shale gas solution come 2014.

ALEC Trojan Horse - The Electricity Freedom Act

The nutty, fact-free right-wing Republican attack on renewable energy continues at full force at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Spring Task Force Summit in Charlotte, NC. ALEC is a corporate-funded organization of conservative state legislators from around the country that crafts model legislation serving big business interests. ALEC members go home and introduce those model bills into their state legislatures.

ALEC’s Pennsylvania members include Republican House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (whose participation in ALEC is paid by state taxpayers), House Caucus Administrator Dick Stevenson, House Judiciary Chair Ronald Marsico, House State Government Chair Daryl Metcalfe, Senate Majority Caucus Secretary Robert Robbins, and Senate Judiciary Chair Stewart Greenleaf.

One piece of model legislation that will be included in the members’ packets is something called the “Electricity Freedom Act.” Here’s a summary of the bill, “The Electricity Freedom Act repeals the State of {insert state}’s requirement that electric distribution utilities and electric services companies provide _____ percent of their electricity supplies from renewable energy sources by ____.” In our case that would be Pennsylvania’s landmark 2004 Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act (AEPS) which requires 18 percent of our electricity to come from alternative resources, including 8 percent from renewable resources like wind and solar. The AEPS created wind and solar industries in Pennsylvania that have built 17 wind project that produce enough electricity to power about a quarter million homes and 6,000 solar projects.

Another bill in the packet is the “Intrastate Coal and Use Act” that has already been introduced in West Virginia. According to the Freedom Legislative Forum, the act is designed to “save energy states from federal overregulation.” The Forum lists Pennsylvania as one of the states “well-situated” for introduction of the act.  

ALEC was also represented at a meeting in February between fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups and local anti-wind organizations that laid out a public relations campaign to kill wind energy. Proposed campaign tactics include setting up dummy businesses threatening to erect 400-foot billboards and steering children away from doing science projects on wind energy. There were at least two representatives from Pennsylvania at the meeting. You can see the proposed campaign here.

Fortunately, because of strong public and bi-partisan support for renewable energy among Pennsylvania legislators, this war on renewables has not yet gained traction here. However, renewable energy businesses and advocates need to keep a lookout for introduction of the “Electricity Freedom Act,” and dummy businesses proposing to erect 400-foot billboards.

No good news for enviro agencies in Senate Republican budget

The budget that the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously approved yesterday restored and added funding for basic education programs, Penn State, Pitt and Temple and the state university system and health, economic development and agricultural programs. (Go to the PA Budget and Policy Center for an excellent summary and comparison between the Corbett and the Senate Republican budget proposals.)

Unfortunately, there were no restorations or additions to the budgets of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) or the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR). DCNR operations are funded now mostly by revenue from gas drilling and timbering on state forest land. The state revenue contribution to its budget now is below where it was when the agency was created in 1995. Both budget proposals cut DCNR by about $2.5 million.

DEP programs are cut across the board in both budgets – an overall cut of about $10.5 million. The cut would mean the loss of 69 positions, including 30 field inspectors who are the front line of enforcing environmental laws. More than $77 million has already been cut from the state revenue share of the agency’s budget since the 2008-09 fiscal year. The state contribution to DEP’s budget is 59 percent lower than it was during the Ridge Administration.

Staffs in both agencies are overworked and demoralized. Most of them have a genuine commitment to the agencies’ missions of conserving and protecting Pennsylvania’s natural resources. Now they find themselves expected to carry out that mission without the resources they need to do the job properly, and many perceive that neither the General Assembly nor the administration value their work.

The public’s support for enforcing environmental laws and their understanding of the critical need to protect clean air and clean water has remained consistently strong over the last 30 years. Pennsylvania’s constitution guarantees us the right to clean air and clean water and places the state in charge of carrying out that guarantee. Unless DEP and DCNR have adequate funding, they will be unable to give the people of Pennsylvania the clean air and water they want and deserve.

Keep the Keystone Fund whole

Governor Corbett wants to eliminate the Keystone Parks and Recreation and Conservation Fund and use its dedicated source of funding – a portion of the real estate transfer tax – to balance the state budget. Not only does he want to use the money this year – about $38 million – he wants to kill the program entirely.

Today, Senate Republicans want to at least preserve the program, and their budget proposal includes raiding the Keystone Fund of only half its revenue - $19 million. That is a substantial improvement, but the Keystone Fund is one of only a few spending programs that was officially sanctioned by the voters. In 1993, an overwhelming majority of Pennsylvania voters approved a referendum which created the fund.

They Keystone Fund has improved the lives of Pennsylvanians in every county in the state by conserving land, building parks and trails and maintaining and improving our award-winning state parks system. The program is extremely cost-effective – each Keystone dollar leverages an average $2.28 in direct investments in these local projects.

Keeping Keystone whole will continue directing money into local communities. Cutting it will threaten the viability of local conservation and recreation projects and won’t make any meaningful dent in the overall state budget. The Keystone Fund’s $38 million is a fraction of one percent of the overall $27 billion state budget.

Keep Keystone whole. To get more information and take action, check out the ConservationAdvocate website.

Heartland billboard a harbinger of a nasty presidential campaign?

The communications staff at the Heartland Institute must be chortling with self-satisfied glee. Heartland, a rabid right-wing anti-science climate change-denying organization put up an electronic billboard in Chicago linking the infamous mass murderer, Ted Kaczynski, to people who accept climate science. A disheveled Kaczynski blankly stares over the words, “I still believe in global warming. Do you?” The outrageous billboard, up for only 24 hours, had the desired effect – it went viral. It was covered by news outlets from coast to coast and erupted across websites and blogs.

Heartland pulled the billboard, while vigorously defending it, even when corporate sponsors of the organization jumped ship.  Most commentators have concluded that Heartland’s billboard experiment was a failure. I don’t think so. After all, I’m writing about it.

The appalling level of discourse represented in this billboard is probably a harbinger of the tone of the upcoming presidential campaign. While the Romney campaign will not engage in speech this outrageous, we can expect the campaign’s supporting “independent” PACs to act as the point of the spear. Expect loathsomely negative ad campaigns to pop up, but with token nods to civility in fine print rationales.  Consider the language of Heartland’s concession to reality, “Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants.” And, this little question and answer explanation, Q -“Are you saying anyone who believes in global warming is a mass murderer, tyrant, or terrorist?”  A- “Of course not. But we are saying that the ethics of many advocates of global warming are very suspect.”

This autumn, if not sooner, this kind of unrestrained hate speech will ooze across our airwaves and the web in the service of defeating President Obama. Some of the fossil-fueled PACs will undoubtedly try to use climate policy as a wedge issue. After all, the president has proposed the first legal restraints on the pollution that is causing climate change. But that tactic may run into a head wind of public opinion which is changing as people are now observing the actual real-world impacts of our warming planet as the weather gets more extreme.

Conventional wisdom holds that a political campaign that is the victim of a rabid attack must strike back. But it may serve the campaign to re-elect the president better to keep its cool under the inevitable barrage of hate that will be fired from the right.

A federal floor for fracking rules

The Hill reports that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will release its rules for fracking as early as today or tomorrow. These new regulations will apply only to gas drilling that is done on federal public lands – national forests, national parks, Bureau of Land Management lands and other federal property. While the rules will apply only to drilling on public land, they can serve as minimum standards that should apply to all gas drilling.

As reported in The Hill observers expect the rules to require disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking, standards for gas well integrity, restrictions on wastewater disposal among other things. These regulations follow on the heels of new EPA rules requiring drillers to control air pollution and methane emissions from their operations.

Predictably, the industry is launching a furious lobbying campaign to weaken the rules. Top industry representatives met with Obama administration officials from the Office of Management and Budget, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of the Interior, and the Council on Environmental Quality, a meeting that included this presentation. We can most likely expect the industry to open up a public relations front in this campaign, and an attempt to politicize the new environmental protections as being somehow anti-energy.  

The industry also argues that the states should have primary responsibility for regulating oil and gas drilling, and they have a point. Gas drillers in Texas deal with much different geology, climate and terrain than gas drillers in Pennsylvania. But the proper role of the federal government should be to set minimum standards that must be followed by all drillers wherever they are operating. The states should work from those minimums and customize their fracking regulations to properly protect their unique resources.

A good example of the value of federal regulations is the new set of rules EPA recently issued that requires the drillers to control air pollution from their operations. Pennsylvania’s gas drilling regulations do not address air pollution from drilling operations. But thanks to the new EPA rules, drillers operating here as well as elsewhere will be required to control air pollution.

When it comes to environmental protection, the feds should set the minimums, and the states should be free to go beyond the minimum to best protect the health of their citizens and natural resources.

Enviro groups settle lawsuit over drilling wastewater dumping

Clean Water Action and the Three Rivers Waterkeeper have settled a lawsuit against the City Municipal Authority of McKeesport that ensures that the Mckeesport sewage treatment plant will no longer accept gas drilling wastewater and discharge it into the Monongahela River.

Conventional sewage treatment plants do not have the equipment to remove the chemicals and salts that are present in gas drilling wastewater. In 2008, the salts in the drilling wastewater created extremely high levels of total dissolved solids (TDS) on a 70 mile stretch of the Mon. The water tasted bad and the TDS levels interfered with equipment at manufacturers along the river who use the water. The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) ordered sewage treatment plants to drastically reduce their acceptance of drilling wastewater, and enacted new rules requiring treatment plants to meet significantly lower pollution standards for TDS and other constituents of drilling wastewater. However, the plants receiving the drilling waste at the time were grandfathered and were allowed to continue passing the drilling waste through their plants.

In 2011, DEP began to find high levels of bromides in western Pennsylvania rivers. The high levels of bromides in the water were combining with disinfectants at drinking water treatment plants and creating trihalomethanes, a chemical which causes cancer. DEP Secretary Michael Krancer then asked gas drillers to voluntarily stop sending their wastewater to treatment plants that are not equipped to properly treat it, but did not ask the sewage treatment plants to refuse to take it.

In September of 2011 the Environmental Protection Agency asked 13 sewage treatment plants to certify that they are no longer accepting gas drilling wastewater. To date, only 3 have done so. Without binding legal agreements like the one reached between the environmental organizations and McKeesport, there is no guarantee that the practice has halted.

The citizen suit provision of the Clean Water Act makes it possible for environmental groups to enforce the law when regulatory agencies fail to do so. Congratulations to Clean Water Action and the Three Rivers Waterkeeper for reaching this settlement and safeguarding the health of the people who drink the water.

House Dems lay down Marcellus gauntlet

Yesterday, House Democrats introduced a package of bills they’re calling the Marcellus Compact. The six bills are written to address what many see at the most glaring deficiencies in Act 13, the dreadful drilling bill. The six bills would:

·        levy a reasonable, competitive severance tax;

·        restore the ability of local governments to use their zoning powers to manage the impacts of drilling in their communities;

·        increase bonding requirements;

·        increase setbacks to better protect water resources;

·        create a public online system to track drilling wastewater and disposal;

·        prohibit drilling in floodplains;

·        clarify the rights of doctors to access medical information about patients who may be suffering from exposure to gas drilling chemicals and guarantee they can share it with patients and other medical professionals; and

·        create an incentive for gas drilling companies to hire Pennsylvania workers.

The bills are being introduced by House leadership, leader Frank Dermody (D-Allegheny), and majority whip Mike Hanna (D-Clinton/Centre), and by Rep. Phyllis Mundy (D-Luzerne), Rep. Steve Santaserio (D-Bucks), Rep. Rick Mirabito (D-Lycoming) and Rep. Matt Bradford (D-Montgomery).

Many of the elements of the bills were part of the debate that led to the passage of Act 13. During floor consideration of the bill, Republican leadership shut down the debate to shield their members from having to take controversial votes over some of the least palatable provisions of the bill, especially the pre-emption of local control.

The fate of these bills is at the mercy of that same Republican leadership. It’s doubtful that they will allow any of these bills out of committee. However, in some legislative districts, especially in the southeast and particularly in Bucks County, Republican who fail to support these bills and work to bring some or all of them to the floor could face angry voters in the upcoming election. Bucks County citizens woke up the day after the passage of Act 13 to discover they were powerless to prevent gas drilling in their communities and were not eligible to receive impact fee money.

Senator Ferlo (D-Allegheny) is circulating a co-sponsor memo for a similar bill, and Senator McIlhinney (R-Bucks) has vowed to introduce legislation exempting Bucks County from the zoning preemption in Act 13.

The introduction of the Marcellus Compact signals that the House Democrats will use Republican votes for Act 13 against them. Republicans who do not support the package may have some explaining to do to their constituents.