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RESIDENTS, ENVIRONMENTALISTS RAISE CONCERNS OVER REOPENING LIMESTONE QUARRY
Outline of JVAS testimony regarding proposed Catharine Township quarry
Message from the new JVAS president
“WORKING WOODLANDS” — THE NATURE CONSERVANCY'S PA. FOREST CONSERVATION PROGRAM
Drill, Baby, Drill! — The inside story of Gov. Ed Rendell's plot to pillage Pennsylvania's forests, consequences be damned.
GAS TAX MAKES SENSE
FOREST ROADS FACILITATE SPREAD OF INVASIVE PLANTS
IT’S GETTING HARDER TO SEE PA’S ONCE VAST FOREST THROUGH THEIR FRAGMENTS
HOW MARCELLUS SHALE GAS CAME TO BE TAX-EXEMPT IN PENNSYLVANIA
JVAS letter to Representative Jerry Stern urging him to support a State budget that provides
JVAS letter to Senator John Eichelberger urging him to oppose opening additional state forest lands to Marcellus shale gas drilling
LOCAL CONSERVATION GROUPS OPPOSE SANDY RIDGE WIND FARM PERMIT
ON THE SUPPORT OF MANDATORY STREAM BUFFERS
RESIDENTS, ENVIRONMENTALISTS RAISE CONCERNS OVER REOPENING LIMESTONE QUARRY
Altoona Mirror article by Wendy Zook in July 25, 2010 edition
A proposed limestone quarry operation in Catharine Township is causing a big stir in this small-town area. The project, by Pittsburgh-based Gulf Trading & Transport LLC, would be on 200 acres used as a quarry more than eight decades ago. The tract borders part of the Juniata River and Rails to Trails' Lower Trail along one of its most serene spots, although the company has agreed not to operate within 300 feet of trail borders. Nine environmental groups ranging from the Juniata Valley Audubon Society and Little Juniata River Association to the local chapter of the National Speleological Society and Pennsylvania Native Plant Society are opposing the project, calling it a threat to animals and the natural flora and fauna of the area. Neighbors are concerned about increased noise and dust, harm to their water and a disruption along the quiet country roads of the township. More than 600 names have been added so far to a petition being circulated by Mick and Holly Tekely, who have lived near the property for about five years. Gulf owner Clifford Wise said he understands the concerns but says his 5-year-old company wants to be a long-term, good neighbor. "Nobody's going to destroy anything," Wise said. The quarry will be reclaimed, the area cleaned up and part of it preserved as farmland or a recreational area, Wise said. He said about 135 of the 200 acres will be used for mining. The best part, he added, is that more than 40 people, most of them local, will be employed by the quarry operations. Protecting the environment At a special meeting Tuesday, Rails to Trails of Central Pennsylvania board members decided to not necessarily object to the quarry project, but to an environmental assessment done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture earlier this year. According to the assessment, a "few single residential buildings exist adjacent to or within 1,000 feet of the project area that will not be directly affected" but indirect effects may include changes to scenery and possible low level noise. "We're opposing the quarry only on pretense that the environmental assessment is not complete," President Jennifer Barefoot said. "There was a lot of inaccuracies." For example, Barefoot said the environmental assessment made it seem as though the property has been in continuous mining operations over the past 80 years. Gulf employee Jack Halpern said the quarry last operated in 1927 by subsidiaries of Bethlehem Mining. At that time, the process of making steel was changed, and the particular limestone from that quarry wasn't needed anymore. There were about 300 employees at the site then as well as a quarry town at the time called Carlim, Halpern said. Barefoot also objected to Rails to Trails not being afforded the opportunity to be part of the assessment process. Korah Abraham, USDA Rural Development State Environmental coordinator, said the typical process includes conferring with federal and state agencies as well as the local and county governments to prepare the document. Then, organizations and concerned citizens have the opportunity to raise concerns, all of which will be looked at in depth, Abraham said. "We do have a number of comments from the groups like the Rails to Trails and some of the individual homeowners, which happens on some of the projects we do," he said. "We need to look at all of them and see how relevant they are to the project. We want to make sure that we study everything properly and find out how we can address that. It's going to take some time." The USDA often does studies like this for projects that may affect a large area or large number of people and organizations, Abraham said. The USDA gave the project a $5.4 million loan in May to help pay the cost of equipment and operations, which meant the assessment was required. Wise said the company has dotted every "I" and crossed every "T," undergoing studies for rare species such as the Indiana brown bat and its designated areas of hibernation and habitat. "To the best of my knowledge, we've done everything that the state ... has asked us to do," Wise said. The Huntingdon County Cave Hunters contends the environmental assessment has ignored the destruction of the small-footed bat and the springtail in the area. The small-footed bat is one of the species that inhabit nearby Heller Caves, near the Lower Trail. "We question the validity of the USDA Environmental Assessment," the group said in a press release. "We are unconditionally opposed to the issuance of any mining permit and the damage to the environment that would follow." Stan Kotala, Juniata Valley Audubon Society conservation chairman, said he doesn't see the project reaching fruition. "There's a lot of very angry people," Kotala said. "There's just too much opposition." He said residents are asking township supervisors to adopt an ordinance mandating a quarter-mile distance between the project and the trail and the caves. Troubling traffic A township road, Overlook Drive, and two state routes, Fox Run Road and Yellow Springs Drive, will likely be used by large trucks carrying limestone to power plants for a scrubbing process to remove sulfur from emissions. The limestone will stay on the East Coast, predominantly within Pennsylvania, Wise said. Two contracts are in place with PSEG's Keystone Generation Station in Shelocta and the Conemaugh Generating Station in New Florence. Wise said cement companies in areas such as Allentown often buy limestone from central Pennsylvania to mix into their cement powder to create a brighter, stronger concrete. The product could also be used for driveways and road projects, Wise said, noting a maximum of 240,000 tons will be transported from the quarry each year. "Whatever we do, it's done in a right way," Wise said. Mick Tekely, using figures from other mine company transportation statistics, estimated that more than 300 trucks a day could be traveling the two-lane Overlook Drive. "Now, you see maybe a tractor once in a while," he said. "You don't see too much traffic at all. It's going to be a mess with the road." Wise said the estimate of 300 trucks a day would send more than 190,000 tons out of the quarry a month, far exceeding the company's plans. "It's not made for that kind of traffic," neighbor Gloria Sweeney, who has lived in the area almost 30 years, said of Overlook Drive. "That's going to be a dangerous situation now on that road." Catharine Township Secretary Kara Deters said the township hasn't discussed the roads in question. That topic will probably get more discussion at the next township meeting Aug. 2. She noted the township office has been overwhelmed by comments and questions from area residents after an informative meeting with the company earlier this month brought out 60 concerned people. "They're worried about the sereneness of the area," Deters said of comments received by the township. "We would like to see everything worked out and concerns answered," she said, adding that township solicitor Allen E. Gibboney was looking into current ordinances to see what regulation the township might have. "The only control or say that we will have in it will be outlined in our ordinances if something comes up. If it's not outlined, I'm not sure Catharine Township has a say over certain things." PennDOT officials said that signs noting a 10-ton weight limit were going up this week along Fox Run Road and Yellow Springs Drive but no other plans were in place for dealing with the quarry operations. Peace and quiet Some of the company's future neighbors still aren't convinced. "We bought [our property] for the peace and quiet and for the trail," Mick Tekely said. "Now it's going to change." He said he's happy for the jobs the project may bring but thinks that the major issue is location. "This is not a good place for this project," he said, pondering the impact of blasting and truck traffic. "All I see is lose, lose, lose across the board for us." Sweeney agrees. "We're not happy to have it coming," Sweeney said. "I don't know if there's any way to stop it or not. This is a nice area, and we just don't need it. It's nice and quiet here, and it's going to be industrial soon." Along with neighbors' concerns, those who use the Lower Trail also have spoken out. Larry Hart of Duncansville averages about 4,000 miles a year riding his bike on the trail. "It would be a major change down here in that area," Hart said. "There would be a lot of noise and a lot of everything else. It's just very peaceful. You're going to lose part of that." The company has been approved for a small non-coal operating permit from the Department of Environmental Protection, which means it can proceed with building internal roads, piping over streams to provide access for workers and building a truck wash and pond as well as cleaning up much of the area before winter weather sets in. It is still waiting for DEP approval of a large operations application, which would allow for the actual mining of the stone. "None of those things should interfere with anybody or anything," Wise said. "I don't even know how it can." Dust shouldn't be a huge issue either, Wise said, because of the standard business use of dust suppressants - water sprays similar to a street sweeper function that keeps the amount of dust produced from blasting way down. "You don't just go out there and create these huge dust plumes," he said. Looking to future Locals also say the proposed project would be a disservice to the more than 100,000 annual visitors to the Lower Trail. "It's a beautiful trail, and there's so many people who use it," Sweeney said. Wise said his firm's first acts will be to improve the area, cleaning up piles of rubble that have been along the trail for 50 or 60 years as well as grading portions of the area to make for a better experience. "We're not mining next to the trail," he said. "Nobody in their right mind would do that. We're not going to interfere with the trail at all." He took issue with what he called "misinformation" concerning early test drillings allegedly causing a rockslide along the trail. He denied that allegation, saying if people remained open-minded they might find the company is after what's best for the area, including dozens of good-paying jobs for equipment operators, administrative personnel, transportation workers and stone preparation employees. "There's at least 50 million tons of stone on the property," Wise said. "I think we'll be there at least 75 years, maybe more. Will we be good stewards of the environment there? The answer is 100 percent. We're going to be there, too." Hart said he will continue coming to the trail for his daily bike ride, cross-country skiing adventure, walk or fishing outing. Deters said patience is key throughout the process. "It's a small township and it's usually fairly quiet," she said. "I think things are being handled well at the moment. It's important to not jump the gun on anything and to just take everything into account and look at all of the sides."
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“WORKING WOODLANDS” — THE NATURE CONSERVANCY'S
PA. FOREST CONSERVATION PROGRAM
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GAS TAX MAKES SENSE
Editorial in January 18, 2010 edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer
The windfall from leasing state forests to natural gas drillers demonstrates that it's time for Pennsylvania to tax producers in this lucrative energy boom.
At an auction last week, energy companies bid an average of $4,020 an acre for the rights to drill on 32,000 acres of state forest in north-central Pennsylvania. It earned the state $128.5 million, more than twice the amount called for by legislators.
Just more than a year ago, a similar auction brought average bids of $2,000 per acre. That shows how attractive the state's Marcellus Shale gas deposits are to drillers.
Further proof is that Exxon Mobil last month purchased XTO Energy, a Texas gas producer with large holdings in the Marcellus Shale, for $41 billion. (Ominously, the deal allows Exxon to back out if Congress imposes "impracticable" regulations on the drilling technique, called hydraulic fracturing, which pumps a secret mix of chemicals into the ground. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) has proposed sensible legislation that would essentially require drillers to abide by the Safe Drinking Water Act.)
Given the clamor by the oil and gas industry to get at Pennsylvania's fields, Gov. Rendell is right to renew his call for a production tax on natural gas wells. He tried to implement this tax last year, but shelved the idea when Senate Republicans resisted during the lengthy budget fight.
The industry has argued that imposing a production tax would discourage energy companies from drilling in Pennsylvania. But the money flowing in this game shows that argument is no longer valid, if it ever was. More than 800 Marcellus wells are now operating in Pennsylvania, with many more expected this year. The boom is on.
In spite of this new gold rush and in spite of the state's budget woes, many Republicans in the legislature still oppose a tax on gas production. Some of them argue that drillers are already paying royalties and other taxes, as if that doesn't happen in other gas-producing states. It does.
Oklahoma taxes oil and gas production, and also imposes a petroleum excise tax. Texas taxes oil and gas production, as well as levying an oil field cleanup fee. West Virginia and Ohio charge severance taxes. Nearly every state with significant oil and gas deposits imposes these taxes.
And the revenue for those states has been significant. In 2007, New Mexico raised $843 million from severance taxes. Oklahoma received $942 million. West Virginia took in $328 million.
By not instituting this tax, opponents are asking ordinary taxpayers to pay a greater share of the bill for state services, while allowing gas producers who are extracting the state's natural resources to pay less than their fair share. It makes no sense.
A production tax also makes better sense than raising money through an unlimited leasing of state forests. About one-third of Pennsylvania's 2.1 million acres of state forest is now open to oil and gas development.
The state needs to take a careful look before leasing more of this precious resource. Conservation policy must not depend simply on how much money can be raised in an auction for drillers.
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FOREST ROADS FACILITATE SPREAD OF INVASIVE PLANTS
Penn State Live newsletter — December 10, 2009
Invasive plants are advancing into eastern forests at an alarming rate, and the rapid spread has been linked by researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences to forest road maintenance and the type of dirt and stone used on roads.
Perhaps predictably, according to David Mortensen, a professor of weed ecology who has been studying the spread of invasive plants for nearly two decades, humans are unwittingly accelerating the relentless march of invasives into even isolated forests. The findings are especially significant in the face of massive forest road-building efforts expected to support greatly expanded natural-gas drilling operations into the Marcellus shale formation. Hundreds or even thousands of gas wells could be established in eastern forests in the next few years, depending on the market price of gas.
In a paper titled “Forest Roads Facilitate the Spread of Invasive Plants,” published in the August 2009 issue of Invasive Plant Science and Management, Mortensen detailed some eye-opening revelations about the process by which invasive plants advance so quickly.
“Roads can play a profound role in the spread and growth of invasive species by serving as corridors for movement and by providing prime habitat for establishment,” Mortensen explained. “For example, forest managers have reported that the borders of hundreds of miles of forest roads have been invaded by Japanese stiltgrass in a period of less than 10 years.&rquo;
As part of his research, Mortensen — who was assisted by post-doctoral researcher Emily Rauschert and doctoral candidate Andrea Nord — performed a large-scale survey of the presence and abundance of 13 invasive plants and found that the most abundant species, Microstegium (Japanese stiltgrass) is strongly associated with proximity to roads. He then focused his attention on trying to determine the reasons and devise a strategy to slow the spread.
The researchers discovered, to their amazement, that Japanese stiltgrass on its own does not spread quickly. To better understand why the invasive plant is achieving such a high rate of spread in eastern forests, they deliberately introduced Microstegium patches in a forested site similar to the one in which the survey was conducted and allowed patches to naturally expand over four years before controlling all patches.
“Through this multi-year study, we found the natural spread rate was surprisingly slow, several orders of magnitude slower than that observed by the forest managers we work with,” Mortensen said. “We also found that spread was greatest in habitats adjacent to forest roads.
“It is clear that the rates of spread occurring in forests throughout the study region are aided by management practices such as road grading, which is employed frequently to maintain the dirt and gravel roads.”
Japanese stiltgrass seed becomes mixed with the dirt and gravel and then is carried along as graders push the crushed stone to fill holes and smooth road surfaces. Mortensen also suspects invasive plant seeds may be picked up and transported by equipment, so he suggests spread could be limited by carefully cleaning the undersides of construction vehicles and other machines before they travel from one road job to another.
“Management of this troublesome invasive can be enhanced with a multifaceted, integrated approach,” he said. “Particular attention should be paid to infestations that serve as sources for seed dispersal into uninvaded or environmentally sensitive areas. The primary vectors of long-distance dispersal, such as road maintenance activities or vehicle traffic, should be identified and mitigating steps taken. Finally, it is important to minimize road-edge disturbance to the extent possible, as such disturbance provides an ideal seedbed for the newly dispersed Microstegium seed.”
Perhaps the most startling finding of Mortensen's research relates to the nature of dirt and gravel on forest roads that enables invasive plants such as Japanese stiltgrass to thrive.
“The crushed limestone used to surface many forest roads and to line culverts and drains along those roads are creating ideal conditions for the invasives to spread rapidly,” he said. “The high alkalinity sediment from the stone, mixed with water running off the roads during storms, eventually spills out into the forests, carrying invasive plant seeds and creating areas for them to grow quickly. The high alkalinity prevents native plants that have become adapted to acidic forest soils from growing, and invasives such as Japanese stiltgrass fill the void.”
Ironically, the crushed limestone is being used on many forest roads and in ditches and drains that parallel mountain streams precisely because the material leaches a high-alkalinity slurry that improves the productivity and water chemistry of the streams. That benefits the wild trout and other aquatic organisms that have suffered in many mountain streams after decades of acidic atmospheric deposition (acid rain).
“That only complicates the battle against the spread of invasive plants into eastern forests and shows the interconnected nature of ecosystems,” Mortensen said. “But measures need to be taken to slow the spread of invasive plants such as Microstegium, because over the long run they will change the nature of our plant communities by outcompeting native plants.”
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IT’S GETTING HARDER TO SEE PA’S ONCE VAST FOREST THROUGH THEIR FRAGMENTS
By Rona Kobell, Bay Journal, December 2009, newsletter of the
Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay
When an early Pennsylvania settler clawed his way through the woods to the top of a hill, he found disappointment. The view, he said, "is nothing but an undulating surface of impenetrable forest."
Penn's Woods was aptly named. When colonists arrived in the 1600s, it was 98 percent forest, causing another settler to declare that it "was not a land of prospects. There is too much wood."
Few complained over the next 200 years as the state's trees "came down like tall grass before a giant scythe," as a contemporary observer put it. By the time botanist Joseph Rothrock traveled through the northern tier in the late 1800s, he called it the "Pennsylvania desert."
Rothrock led a campaign to restore the state's forests. In 1895, he was named Pennsylvania's first commissioner of forestry. His program flourished. Over the next century, Pennsylvania's state forests grew to cover more than 2.1 million acres-one of the largest expanses of public forestland in the East, and one of the nation's most respected forestry programs.
For the last 11 years the independent Forest Stewardship Council certified that Pennsylvania's forests met or exceeded standards to maintain the sustainability of the woodlands. But they have added a caveat-they asked the state to study the long-term effects of the rapidly increasing gas drilling within the big woods.
Today, more than a million acres of the state's prized forestland sit on top of the Marcellus Shale-the gas-rich rock that's prompted a rush to drill in the Keystone State. Already, the state has leased more than 600,000 acres of its forestland for drilling and recently decided to open 200,000 more acres with the hope of raising $60 million to support its recession-strapped budget.
Gas company officials maintain they've been drilling in the forests for decades, with few problems. But legislators and biologists worry about the scale of the current boom.
"God isn't making any more land. He quit that a long time ago," said Rep. David K. Levdansky, a Democrat and chairman of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives' Finance Committee as well as an avid outdoorsman. "We ought to be very cautious about doing this."
What happens in the vast state forests between Interstate 80 and the New York border-places such as Tioga, Loyalsock and Tiadaghton, as well as the private forests nearby-is also of concern to the Chesapeake Bay, 200 miles downstream. According to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service and the Conservation Fund, the Bay watershed loses 100 acres of forests a day, and is likely to lose nearly 10 million acres by 2030.
That's of great concern, because forests have long been considered the best land use to protect the Bay. They absorb nitrogen, slow erosion, provide crucial fish and bird habitat and promote biodiversity.
The rush for gas has the potential to accelerate those losses and break up increasingly rare, large, unbroken blocks of forest. Each drill site requires at least five acres for a well pad, and miles of roads and pipelines that fragment the big woods.
"There's no doubt this is going to have an impact on interior-dwelling species," said Jerry Hassinger, a retired biologist from the Pennsylvania Game Commission. Fragmentation paves the way for invasive species and Hassinger fears that even if the gas companies do reclamation, the trees and grass they plant will be no match for the wily intruders that could hinder any forest recovery.
The affected area could extend up to 300 meters from the disturbance site, said Kim Van Fleet, a biologist with the Pennsylvania Audubon Society. This phenomenon is called the "edge effect." Because everything in an ecosystem interconnects, changes in sunlight, wind and vapor pressure brought about by cutting clearings have far-reaching consequences.
Van Fleet is worried about the scarlet tanager-17 percent of that songbird's breeding population lives in Pennsylvania forests. Cerulean warblers, wood thrush, ovenbirds, and forest raptors also top her list of affected birds.
"If there is fragmentation nearby, it will affect these birds," Van Fleet said, noting that they all require large forest tracts to thrive.
Matt Royer, a lawyer for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, was concerned enough with the pace of drilling permit approvals in the Tioga Forest that he filed a legal challenge. By the time he won it, the earth had already been disturbed.
"What's it going to look like, in two or three years, when you do an aerial flyover of northeastern Pennsylvania, and it's sliced and diced with all these well pads and compressor stations, a contiguous forest area that doesn't have a contiguous forest anymore?" he asked.
Van Fleet and others point to lessons learned in the Allegheny National Forest in northwest Pennsylvania, where gas companies have been drilling shallow wells for decades, and where, the U.S. Forest Service reports, several species have lost habitat to gas drilling.
Ryan Talbott, executive director of the Allegheny Defense Project, said gas companies once drilled a few dozen shallow wells a year. In 2007, they drilled more than 1,200 wells. Today, more than 2,000 miles of roads support the gas industry. Talbott says he sees fewer cerulean warblers, northern goshawks, turtles and rattlesnakes, and more invasive plants.
"It was literally like watching a national forest be transformed in a couple of years," Talbott said.
Last year, Talbott's group sued the Forest Service for trying to open Pennsylvania's only national forest to more than 1,000 new wells without following the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires both public input and government reviews. In April, the Forest Service agreed to delay some drilling until it conducted a full environmental review with public comment.
Rep. Edward G. Staback, a Democrat and chairman of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives' Game and Fisheries Committee, opposed opening more forests to drilling and instead pushed for a gas tax to raise money. He lost.
But, Staback said he'll be watching the forests closely.
"Our concern is that the gas companies not walk away from their responsibilities the way the coal barons did years ago. They left land filled with slag piles. We're still paying the price for that today," he said. "We want to be absolutely, positively, sure that there's no way that happens again.
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HOW MARCELLUS SHALE GAS CAME TO BE
TAX-EXEMPT IN PENNSYLVANIA
Desperate for revenue, Gov. Rendell chose not to tax the “gold rush.”
By Mario F. Cattabiani and Amy Worden, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writers
— Posted Oct. 25, 2009 —
All through Pennsylvania's 101-day budget impasse, Gov. Rendell spoke of pain.
A recession-weary state had to tighten its belt. Revenues had to rise — income tax, sales tax, new taxes on whole industries. "We can't get this budget resolved," Rendell said, "without everyone feeling some pain."
But when the budget was finally signed Oct. 9, one industry came away pain-free.
The natural-gas industry's leaders and lobbyists beat back Rendell's proposal to tax gas as it is pulled to the surface from the rich black-rock reservoir known as the Marcellus Shale.
So, as drilling rigs are sprouting in the state's northern tier and southwestern corner, the gas those rigs are extracting still isn't taxed. That makes Pennsylvania unique among the 15 states that produce the most natural gas.
What's more, the industry persuaded Harrisburg to lease more public land to gas drillers — even as the state's budget for environmental protection was being sharply cut.
What happened to Rendell's gas-tax proposal?
He says the industry made good arguments for staving it off. He did not want to slow the "gold rush," as he called it, of jobs and commerce the drillers would bring.
One legislator came away with a more cynical view.
"The same old influential interest groups getting their way," said State Rep. Greg Vitali (D., Delaware). "It was just another day in Harrisburg."
What follows is a closer look at some key moments in the short life of Rendell's proposal to help balance the budget by taxing natural gas.
Tapping "the gold rush." As Rendell prepared his Feb. 4 budget address, a boom was under way. Natural-gas industry representatives were fanning out across the state, securing leases and drilling wells at twice last year's pace.
Rendell, a policy wonk, did his homework. He spoke with Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a state that also sits atop the Marcellus Shale and has taxed natural gas for years.
In his budget address, Rendell proposed to tax gas extracted in Pennsylvania.
Rendell said Manchin, a fellow Democrat, had assured him that West Virginia's tax did not "inhibit gas extraction and that it is continuing at a record pace, and it's reaping critically needed revenues so the state can provide services to its citizens."
Rendell's plan matched West Virginia's — a 5 percent tax on the value of natural gas at the wellhead, plus 4.7 cents per 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas extracted.
By Rendell's estimates, such a tax could raise $107 million for Pennsylvania in its first year, helping fill a billion-dollar budget gap.
In a recent interview, Manchin described what he said to Rendell months ago.
"The Marcellus Shale is a tremendous producer. A severance tax will not deter" the drillers, Manchin said. "Believe me, if we didn't have the gas, they wouldn't be here."
Manchin said he had faced industry complaints in 2005 when he proposed to expand the tax, with some companies threatening to leave.
He offered to have the state buy up their leases "so you don't lose one penny." No one took him up on his offer.
Skin in the game. By spring, Rendell's tax proposal was the talk of the industry. In a June 1 panel discussion held by a New York investment firm, four executives spoke of what might happen next in Pennsylvania.
They talked of the Marcellus "play" — industry parlance for a focused drilling campaign. Rich Weber, president and chief operating officer of Atlas Energy Resources of Pittsburgh, pooh-poohed Rendell's tax proposal.
"I think the shot over the bow from the governor was just that. He wanted to spark discussion," Weber said, according to a published transcript. "I think the legislature is going to kill it for this year. It may be inevitable down the road but who knows."
Jim Fraser, senior vice president of Talisman Energy Inc. in Calgary, Alberta, did some math. "We have encouraged the state to lease some more of that land," he said, adding that his "back of an envelope" figures showed the state could raise more money by leasing land to drillers than by taxing the gas.
Chad Stephens, senior vice president of Range Resources Corp. of Texas, weighed the pros and cons.
"Maybe at some point in the far-out future if they introduce a severance tax, once the play gets some legs, that's a different story," he said. "But if they do implement the tax, at least the government will have some skin in the game." State officials might become "more cooperative and try to help the play along."
Murry S. Gerber, chairman and chief executive officer of EQT Corp., spoke next.
"Chad said it right. Skin in the game," Gerber said. "The local governments need to get some of this money back. I mean, we are on their roads."
But the state had to be flexible, he said. "If it's all take and no give . . . we should just say no as long as we can."
The meeting. Four days later, Gerber sat with his aides and state officials in his company's sixth-floor conference room in Pittsburgh. His guests included Rendell.
Gerber knew the governor well. He'd donated $30,000 to Rendell's 2006 reelection fund, records show. Last October, Rendell went to Pittsburgh with a check of his own — $2.8 million in state grants and tax credits to help Gerber's company expand operations and add 354 jobs.
Gerber requested the June 5 meeting. He hoped to convince Rendell that the state should consider all the various natural-gas issues — wastewater treatment, leasing royalties — and not just a tax, said Kevin West, managing director of external affairs and one of four EQT executives at the meeting.
Gerber did most of the talking. Rendell asked questions. "You could see the governor turning a little bit" to Gerber's pitch, West said last week.
Rendell did not say he would abandon the tax. At the meeting's end, he said he would create a task force of stakeholders — legislators, environmental officials, industry executives — to examine Marcellus Shale issues.
"We were very pleased with that," said West. "We felt he adopted our position."
The study. As the summer rolled on and the budget impasse deepened, the industry made its case in Harrisburg, spending more than $1 million to lobby legislators in the first half of the year alone, state reports showed.
Foes of the gas tax began citing a Pennsylvania State University study, "An Emerging Giant: Prospects and Economic Impacts of Developing the Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Play."
The study said the tax would backfire.
Marcellus Shale drilling in Pennsylvania was in "the takeoff phase," the study said. It concluded that a severance tax would decrease revenue by reducing drilling and slowing job growth.
Without the tax, the study said, the Marcellus reserve could become a bonanza for the state "if pro-growth policies are pursued that unleash the entrepreneurial spirit."
The study's primary author, Robert Watson, said Friday that the shale contains enough gas to make Pennsylvania "an OPEC nation."
Watson, an emeritus professor of petroleum and natural-gas engineering, also acknowledged that the industry had funded the study.
The Marcellus Shale Committee, a group of more than 50 natural-gas and drilling companies, commissioned the study and paid Penn State about $100,000 for it, he said.
But one version of the study that circulated in Harrisburg did not mention the funding source. Subsequent copies did. Watson said the omission had been simply a mistake made in his rush to publish.
Pennsylvania's environmental community lashed out at the study as a tool of a deep-pocketed industry. Even the state's top conservation official questioned its findings.
At a Marcellus Shale seminar in August, the acting secretary of conservation and natural resources, John Quigley, rose to introduce Watson. Quigley also told the audience — a citizens' advisory panel on environmental policy — that Watson's study was unsubstantiated by facts.
That prompted Watson to stand up and yell, twice, "That's bull–."
Quigley remembers the meeting. "I pointed out that the study was paid for by the industry, and that any suggestion that a severance tax would strangle the infant industry in its crib strains credulity," he said Friday.
Watson stands by his findings. "The procedure we used was scientific," he said. "We would have come up with the same answers regardless of who paid for it."
The surprise. Until August, there was no change in Rendell's public stance. He wanted the tax.
But in a briefing for reporters Aug. 31, the governor said, "It won't be in the mix this year."
Rendell said industry executives had convinced him that imposing a tax now would stunt drilling. Also, he said a drop in the price of natural gas made the tax impractical. And Senate Republicans were so opposed to the tax that it would not pass.
It would have to wait until next year, Rendell said.
"We felt we should let the industry get off to a good start," he said, "and that surpasses our need for money."
His change of position was news to many — including Steve Crawford, Rendell's chief of staff. "The governor's press conferences are always newsworthy," Crawford said last week, "and sometimes they are even newsworthy to those of us closest to him."
His switch also surprised his party's lea ders in the legislature, who made a last-ditch effort to revive the tax before the budget was signed.
Rendell declined requests for an interview for this article, but he authorized aides to describe several meetings he had with industry officials.
Gary Tuma, Rendell's press secretary, said the governor had changed his mind on the tax in July, but had not told aides at that time.
As for the Marcellus Shale task force that Rendell told Gerber he'd create: The governor abandoned the idea because he'd decided to nix the tax for this year, Tuma said.
The tax fight is over for now. But the industry is still stockpiling resources for future contact with Pennsylvania officeholders.
Range Resources, the Texas driller, recently hired away a top Rendell aide to be its vice president for government relations and regulatory affairs. K. Scott Roy had been Rendell's executive deputy chief of staff and his liaison to the natural-gas industry and environmental groups.
Range Resources also hosted a luncheon this month near Pittsburgh for legislators from both parties. After sandwiches, the dozen legislators toured a drilling site.
Among those at the lunch was State Rep. Timothy J. Solobay (D., Washington), an unabashed natural-gas cheerleader. He's seen drillers transform his district. Steamfitters and welders are getting work. Job-training and truck-driving classes are full.
Natural gas "is the new steel," said Solobay. "They all told me is that severance [tax] is coming," he said of industry executives. "They are only asking for a couple of years to get the infrastructure in place."
State Sen. Jake Corman (R., Centre) has seen drill rigs rising in his district, too. Eventually, Corman said, a tax could help towns defray the related costs. "I think a day will come when there's a severance tax," he said. "I just didn't think that day was today."
Others are less sanguine. "This was the best time to do it," State Rep. David K. Levdansky (D., Allegheny) said of the tax. Next year, he said, "the industry will just dig in their heels even harder in hopes that a Republican governor more sympathetic to their cause wins election."
In June, Range Resources launched a political action committee in Pennsylvania. Nine executives put in a total of $49,500. The PAC's first donation, for $5,000, went to a Republican campaign fund begun by state Attorney General Tom Corbett.
He's running for governor next year.
The investment bank RBC Capital Markets invited institutional investors and corporate executives to a conference on global energy in June. A transcript of the event shows several industry executives discussing, among other issues, Gov. Rendell's February proposal to tax natural-gas extraction. To read the transcript, go to...
http://go.philly.com/marcellus2
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LOCAL CONSERVATION GROUPS OPPOSE
SANDY RIDGE WIND FARM PERMIT
The DEP currently is considering an NPDES permit for the Sandy Ridge Wind Farm in Snyder Township, Blair County, and in Rush and Taylor Townships, Centre County. The Moshannon Group of the Sierra Club, the Little Juniata River Association, Save Our Allegheny Ridges, Juniata Valley Audubon, and SAVE ICE MOUNTAIN are opposed to the issuance of this permit and request a public hearing.
The concerns of these local conservation organizations include particulate, chemical, and thermal pollution of special protection waters; increased surface runoff resulting in altered hydrology; and severe degradation of a Blair County Natural Heritage Area described as being “of exceptional conservation value” in the Blair County Natural Heritage Inventory because of its unfragmented forests.
The developer (Gamesa) proposes to widen 9 miles of insignificant forest road and construct 5 miles of new road in this forested Blair County Natural Heritage Area. Adjacent to the road, the developer proposes to construct transmission line corridors, resulting in clearings averaging 60' in diameter but approaching 300' with cuts and fills in sensitive areas. Up to 28 industrial-scale wind turbines will be placed in clearings bulldozed in this forest and additional scalping of the mountainside will take place to accommodate substations and accessory buildings.
Big Fill Run in the project area is classified as Exceptional Value (EV), the highest water quality level that can be designated. Given our resource energy practices of the past, the Allegheny Front region of Blair and Centre possesses few waters that achieve this status. The EV status of Big Fill Run mandates that permit reviews of projects in its watershed undergo more strenuous examination including an antidegradation review. The developer must demonstrate that their activity will maintain and not degrade water quality without exception. We believe that the developer has failed to meet this requirement.
The developer's NPDES Permit Application underestimates the exact limits of earth disturbance. We are particularly concerned with the wide and steep road that the developer intends to cut into the northern slope of Gardner Mountain (Taylor Township, Centre County) in the headwaters of Big Fill Run, just a short distance upslope from this EV stream. Bulldozing a roadway into the extremely steep hillside will result in either cut slopes or fill slopes that vary as they tie into the existing topography.
A review of the disturbance limits shown in the developer's application indicates several areas where direct impacts (i.e., fill placement or excavation) to aquatic resources are likely:
1. Crossing of Sink Run tributary by two parallel roads near the SGL 60 boundary in Snyder Township.
2. Crossing of Vanscoyoc Run in Snyder Township.
3. Crossing of several Big Fill Run tributaries in Taylor Township.
There also are locations within the proposed project area where indirect impacts (effects to the hydraulic forces or hydrologic regime of a resource) to wetlands, springs, and seeps appear not only likely, but unavoidable under the current design. This design would not only permanently reduce the amount of water available to some of the area's wetlands, springs, and seeps, but would also permanently increase the surface flow of water into adjacent tributaries. This increase in surface water volume would change the hydraulic characteristics of the stream flow, risking increased channelization, bank erosion, and sediment loading in these currently stable tributaries. This impact will be particularly severe along Big Fill Run (EV), which will be bordered by a steep and wide heavy-duty roadway for close to two miles up its narrow originating hollow. The developer's plans for containing this excess water flow are grossly inadequate.
In addition to the direct and indirect impacts described above, high potential exists throughout the project area for sediment impacts to the Exceptional Value and High Quality coldwater fishery aquatic resources. The proposed roadway alignments themselves seem to invite aquatic resource degradation from sedimentation. Again, this is particularly true for the steep and wide roadway proposed along Big Fill Run and its headwaters.
Because of impacts to EV wetlands (wetlands associated with HQ and EV waterways), this permit application will require a detailed alternatives analysis, including the analysis of off-site and no-build alternatives for the proposed project. Thus, the developer must look at different areas for access and/or site locations for avoidance.
The Moshannon Group of the Sierra Club, Save Our Allegheny Ridges, the Little Juniata River Association, Juniata Valley Audubon, and SAVE ICE MOUNTAIN call for a public hearing to address the inadequacies of Gamesa's NPDES permit application for the Sandy Ridge Wind Farm. We believe that this application, in its present form, should be denied.
Contact Information:
Little Juniata River Association — President Bill Anderson
bjuniata@verizon.net | 814-684-5922
Juniata Valley Audubon — President David Bonta
bontasaurus@yahoo.com | 814-686-7274
SAVE ICE MOUNTAIN — spokesman Stan Kotala
ccwiba@keyconn.net | 814-946-8840
Sierra Club, Moshannon Group — Chairman Gary Thornbloom
bearknob@verizon.net | 814-353-3466
Save Our Allegheny Ridges — Chairwoman Laura Jackson
mljackson2@embarqmail.com | 814-652-9268
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ON THE SUPPORT OF MANDATORY STREAM BUFFERS
Dear Buffer Supporter:
We need your help over the coming weeks to flood Governor Rendell with letters and faxes urging him to support a mandatory buffer rule.
Over the past six months, we have been working with staff at DEP to incorporate our Buffers 100 proposal into its regulations on stormwater and erosion and sediment control. However, we recently learned from Acting Secretary Hanger that the Department has changed its mind and no longer plans to move forward with regulations requiring buffers on all streams. Instead, DEP is pushing a voluntary program that would encourage developers to include buffers on their sites by eliminating state review of stormwater plans for sites that include buffers.
The Campaign for Clean Water believes that a voluntary program is not good enough. It will have a very limited impact on water quality in our state and is not an adequate substitute for a statewide requirement. DEP already has a voluntary program in place — its Stormwater BMP Handbook includes an incentive program that provides credits to developers who include buffers in their site design. However, this sort of voluntary program will only end up generating buffers on a small number of streams in the state, leaving the vast majority of our streams still at risk of pollution, erosion and flooding due to stormwater runoff.
In addition, DEP’s proposal to eliminate its review of stormwater plans for developers who include buffers is illegal and a bad idea that could lead to even further degradation of our streams. Under DEP’s proposal, a stormwater plan submitted under the seal of a professional engineer would be automatically approved with no technical review by DEP staff and no opportunity for public review and comment.
This would force DEP to approve a stormwater plan even if it is clear the plan won’t work and would lead to flooding or stream pollution. While DEP could take enforcement action after the development is constructed, by then, it’s often impossible to fix the problem. At minimum, it’s much more expensive to fix the problem once the development is built than it is to change a plan before construction is started.
In addition, DEP wants to use this permit-by-rule scheme even in High Quality and Exceptional Value waters, leaving it to the developer’s engineer to make sure that water quality in the stream won’t be degraded! That kind of self-regulation hasn’t worked before...there's no reason to think that it will protect our streams now.
We need your help!
First, please write to Governor Ed Rendell on behalf of your organization and tell him that we need a mandatory buffers program, not a voluntary one. Remind him how important buffers are for improving water quality and stopping flooding. Tell him that DEP’s plan to eliminate its review of stormwater plans is a bad idea that will cause more pollution and flooding and degrade our streams.
Second, please encourage as many of your members as possible to write the Governor too. The Homebuilders Association has been busy lobbying against our Buffers plan; now we need to turn up the heat in support of a mandatory buffers rule.
Letters can be sent to the Governor’s address at 225 Main Capitol, Harrisburg PA 17120 or you can fax them to him at 717-772-8284.
To send a free fax to Governor Ed Rendell, click here.
With questions or for more information, feel free to contact me at bwendelgass@cleanwater.org or 215-545-0250 or Matt Royer at Chesapeake Bay Foundation at mroyer@cbf.org or 717-234-5550. Also, please send me an email letting me know when you’ve sent your letters to the Governor.
Thanks for your support of our Buffers 100 initiative, and for your quick response to this alert!
Bob Wendelgass, chair
PA Campaign for Clean Water
www.pacleanwatercampaign.org
1315 Walnut Street, Suite 1650
Philadelphia PA 19107
215-545-0250 phone
215-545-2315 fax
bwendelgass@cleanwater.org “The river is by far the most attractive highway.”
— Henry David Thoreau
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