Thanks to the conservation vision of men like Joseph Rothrock, of Mifflin County, in the late 1880s and one-time Penn State forester Maurice Goddard in the mid-1900s, Pennsylvania today has 20 state forests, 117 state parks and three conservation areas.
Unlike many other states, Pennsylvania’s state parks are free to visitors, and provide fishing, swimming, picnicking, hiking, boating and many other outdoor pleasures to people of all income levels. The state forests provide similar pleasures, including hunting, and are also a resource for the recreation and timber industries.
These days the state forests and parks hold attraction not just for their lush trees, and mountain streams that feed recreational lakes, but for what lies beneath them — the Marcellus Shale natural gas formation.
Gas companies are already raking in millions from attaining drilling rights from private landowners, who are being compensated through royalties. The industry also holds leases on 724,000 acres of the 1.5 million acres of state forest land within the Marcellus.
Note that the leased state forest acreage is almost half of the total available, and the encroachment of the gas industry is reducing, and in some cases eliminating altogether, land for the state’s wood products industry.
Apparently the Corbett administration feels the economic harvest from the gas industry is bountiful enough to outweigh the economic contributions of recreation and tourism in the state forests, and the jobs and other economic benefits of the forest products sector.
The administration recently rescinded a 4-month-old policy enacted by former Gov. Ed Rendell that required permits for drilling in state forests and parks to undergo additional review. A spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett dismissed the policy as redundant since Rendell also ordered a moratorium on state forest land drilling last October.
Yes, it’s redundant; it’s also moot because Corbett has said he plans to lift the moratorium. Furthermore, the governor has signaled intentions to allow even more leases for drilling in state forests.
We would have urged a slower and more cautionary approach for environmental and safety reasons even before recent New York Times stories on how the relatively new horizontal hydraulic fracturing method of drilling is creating serious environmental and water problems in many parts of the county where it has been tried.
The Times’ reports (published last week in the Centre Daily Times) note that scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have stated in as-of-yet nonpublic studies that Pennsylvania is among the states where wastewater generated by the industry is sometimes ending up in sewage treatment plans ill-equipped to remove certain contaminants, including radioactivity.
In the wake of the Times’ stories, we agree with Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware, who along with more than 75 other legislators sent a letter to Corbett last week asking the administration not to lease any additional state forest land.
We fully recognize the huge economic potential of the Marcellus to Centre County and all of Pennsylvania. But it behooves the Corbett administration to pay more attention to the potential negative consequences to the environment, to other job-supporting industries, and to the recreational enjoyment of state residents.
And we continue to urge the governor to change his position and impose a drilling tax on extracted gas. Aside from giving taxpayers a return on a state resource at a time of huge budget deficits — a tax that every other state with natural gas resources levies — it would help finance the ample environmental and safety regulation this industry clearly is going to need.
Unlike many other states, Pennsylvania’s state parks are free to visitors, and provide fishing, swimming, picnicking, hiking, boating and many other outdoor pleasures to people of all income levels. The state forests provide similar pleasures, including hunting, and are also a resource for the recreation and timber industries.
These days the state forests and parks hold attraction not just for their lush trees, and mountain streams that feed recreational lakes, but for what lies beneath them — the Marcellus Shale natural gas formation.
Gas companies are already raking in millions from attaining drilling rights from private landowners, who are being compensated through royalties. The industry also holds leases on 724,000 acres of the 1.5 million acres of state forest land within the Marcellus.
Note that the leased state forest acreage is almost half of the total available, and the encroachment of the gas industry is reducing, and in some cases eliminating altogether, land for the state’s wood products industry.
Apparently the Corbett administration feels the economic harvest from the gas industry is bountiful enough to outweigh the economic contributions of recreation and tourism in the state forests, and the jobs and other economic benefits of the forest products sector.
The administration recently rescinded a 4-month-old policy enacted by former Gov. Ed Rendell that required permits for drilling in state forests and parks to undergo additional review. A spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett dismissed the policy as redundant since Rendell also ordered a moratorium on state forest land drilling last October.
Yes, it’s redundant; it’s also moot because Corbett has said he plans to lift the moratorium. Furthermore, the governor has signaled intentions to allow even more leases for drilling in state forests.
We would have urged a slower and more cautionary approach for environmental and safety reasons even before recent New York Times stories on how the relatively new horizontal hydraulic fracturing method of drilling is creating serious environmental and water problems in many parts of the county where it has been tried.
The Times’ reports (published last week in the Centre Daily Times) note that scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have stated in as-of-yet nonpublic studies that Pennsylvania is among the states where wastewater generated by the industry is sometimes ending up in sewage treatment plans ill-equipped to remove certain contaminants, including radioactivity.
In the wake of the Times’ stories, we agree with Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware, who along with more than 75 other legislators sent a letter to Corbett last week asking the administration not to lease any additional state forest land.
We fully recognize the huge economic potential of the Marcellus to Centre County and all of Pennsylvania. But it behooves the Corbett administration to pay more attention to the potential negative consequences to the environment, to other job-supporting industries, and to the recreational enjoyment of state residents.
And we continue to urge the governor to change his position and impose a drilling tax on extracted gas. Aside from giving taxpayers a return on a state resource at a time of huge budget deficits — a tax that every other state with natural gas resources levies — it would help finance the ample environmental and safety regulation this industry clearly is going to need.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire