xp - Pennsylvania Declares Victory on Oil and Gas Regs While Failing to Protect Residents Health
From FrackcheckWV
MAP: The Oil and Gas Threat Map shows where all areas across the country within 1/2 mile of an active oil and gas well, and counties with elevated cancer risk due to oil and gas air toxics.
Pennsylvania Declares Victory on Oil and Gas Regs While Failing to Protect Residents Health
From an Article by Nadia Steinzor, Earthworks, June 24, 2016
Thanks to a bill passed this June by the state legislature, Pennsylvania now has the dubious distinction of being the only state in the nation to abandon oil and gas regulations after they’ve been fully developed and publicly reviewed. While other states have modernized oil and gas oversight in the wake of the shale boom, no other state has exempted a major part of the oil and gas industry in the process.
But that’s exactly what SB 279 does. Called the Penn Grade Crude Development Advisory Council bill, http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billinfo/billinfo.cfm?sYear=2015&sInd=0&body=S&type=B&bn=279
it wipes out http://www.pennlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/06/oil_and_gas_rules_wolf.html
updated environmental protection requirements for conventional oil and gas operations (known as Chapter 78). In effect, 178 state representatives and senators just overturned what it took five years, 12 public hearings, 30,000 public comments and affirmative votes by public regulatory commissions and the legislature to accomplish.
Unfortunately, Gov. Wolf just signed SB 279 into law, sounding the death knell for Chapter 78 in the process. Equally unfortunate, official statements from his administration have completely ignored the negative impact SB 279 will have on Pennsylvanians—even as the Governor declares victory for new rules that will go into effect only for unconventional oil and gas operations.
Such political spin may be Harrisburg’s status quo, but in this case it’s a dangerous affront to Pennsylvanians whose air, water and health is damaged by oil and gas development..
On the same day as the SB 279 vote, the Clean Air Task Force (CATF), Earthworks and the FracTracker Alliance released OilandGasThreatMap.com. Using state well location data and U.S. Census Bureau data, it shows that nearly 25 percent of Pennsylvania’s population lives within a half-mile of oil and gas wells and facilities—a distance at which serious health impacts are most clearly linked, according to the majority of peer-reviewed science.
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