Hopeful news for a change: Senate Republicans turn the ship against the proposed Keystone Fund raid

There is encouraging news in the effort to restore funding for the Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund – the backbone of conservation funding in Pennsylvania.

Gov. Corbett wants to permanently eliminate this funding in his proposed budget for the 2012-13 fiscal year. Until this year, a portion of the Commonwealth's realty transfer tax provided dedicated funding to the Keystone Fund; the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources' (DCNR) share of the tax is around $36 million per year. Gov. Corbett wants to divert the entire DCNR share to the General Fund budget. If successful, this would be the largest raid on conservation funding in Pennsylvania history.

But help is at hand. Tuesday the Senate Appropriations Committee chaired by Senator Jake Corman, R-Centre, approved a budget bill that averted the Corbett torpedo and turned the Keystone ship toward calmer waters.

Yesterday the full Senate passed the bill by a 39-8 vote. The Senate Republican budget amendment to Senate Bill 1466 makes two significant changes.

First, and perhaps most significantly, SB 1466 permanently restores the annual dedicated funding mechanism for DCNR's share of Keystone funding from the realty transfer tax. Losing the dedicated funding for Keystone that has been in place since 1993 would have had a crippling effect on many programs. The fund has supported 846 trail projects, helped conserve 145,909 acres of green space, assisted 2,557 community park projects, and made hundreds of significant investments in state parks and state forest recreational projects, and much more.

Second, for fiscal year 2012-13, the Senate Republican budget restores half of the funding for Keystone, approximately $18 million. The other half of the funding is diverted to the General Fund.

Now we need to build on the Senate's action. There is a lot of work to be done, especially in the House, to restore the other $18 million for the Keystone Fund as the budget process moves along.

Thousands of citizens and scores of conservation, environmental, trail, recreation, and other organizations have been contacting and meeting with their legislators to urge full restoration of Keystone funding. Many local governments weighed in for Keystone, too.

The Senate's action marks a turning point in this fight. But we need many more people to put their oars in the water to get the Keystone Fund into a safe harbor.
 
Please contact your legislators in support of full Keystone restoration, or better yet, set up a meeting in their district offices.
 
The Pennsylvania Land Trust Association has some very handy tools on their web site including a fact sheet and a list of the thousands of projects, sorted by county, that have benefited from Keystone.
 
Full speed ahead.
  

Our work: A series of personal reports from PennFuture staff - Joy Bergey

I’ve been affiliated with PennFuture since 2003, when I was a consultant. My primary role was to serve as liaison to the faith community, working to move clergy and the people in the pews from support to advocacy for environmental protections and clean energy.

I quickly got involved in a top PennFuture legislative priority: pushing for Pennsylvania to enact a Renewable Portfolio Standard, or RPS, which would guarantee an ever-increasing amount of our electricity would be from clean sources, primarily wind and solar.

I cut my lobbying teeth on this issue, and got a figurative bloody nose or two in the process. Serious politics – trying to make change that threatens the well-funded establishment, in this case the coal industry – isn’t for the faint of heart.

At that time only a handful of states had an RPS, and no big-coal producing state (including Pennsylvania) had come close to an RPS. So we knew we were taking on Goliath.

I watched my brilliant colleagues at PennFuture figure out how to develop and play both “inside” and “outside” strategies. The inside strategy was to figure out what messages and messengers would move unconvinced legislators whose support was critical. The outside strategy was to use the press and public messengers to counteract the false claims of those trying to convince Pennsylvanians that their homes would go dark and their wallets would empty if an RPS became law.

PennFuture was at the table when a workable solution was found, despite widespread cries that Pennsylvania politics would never tolerate a renewable energy standard.

The key to difficult political successes, as always, was pragmatism. PennFuture isn’t interested in simply talking about how things ought to be in an ideal world. We want accomplishments that actually move us towards a cleaner tomorrow. And since Americans have decided that democracy is how we play the game of politics –that means compromise, like it or not. I love Winston Churchill’s description of democracy – that it’s the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.

So, how did we get the country’s fourth-largest coal state to take a huge step away from coal and towards clean energy? By being smart enough to invite Big Coal to sit at the table. It was, in fact, the only way that PennFuture could be at that same table – and help ensure a bill was passed. So despite the protests of many on the left who said we were “sell-outs,” we helped craft a creative but effective solution, creating two tiers within the RPS. Tier 1 represents the creation of electricity from true renewables – wind and solar. Tier 2 represents electricity created by not-so-true renewables, like the burning of waste coal. But here’s the upside to Tier 2: Pennsylvania has hundreds of huge piles of waste coal left over from our multi-century history of coal mining. These coal mounds dot the landscape, and polluted water leaching through them has killed hundreds of miles of waterways and their aquatic life.

We agree that burning of waste coal isn’t “clean” electricity, but it does help fix a huge water pollution problem in Pennsylvania. And unless we’d have been willing to accept this compromise, there would have been no RPS in Pennsylvania.

I was enormously proud when then-Gov. Rendell signed into law the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard, or AEPS – Pennsylvania’s version of an RPS. This law guarantees that by 2021, at least 8 percent of our electricity supply will come from wind and solar. We were at less than 1 percent at the time of passage, and now we’re almost at 4 percent. None of this would have happened without the AEPS.

PennFuture is actively working to raise the ceiling for the AEPS. The current politics in Harrisburg isn’t making this easy. But it wasn’t easy in 2004, either.

I joined PennFuture staff in 2009 as federal policy manager. I’m now working to get an RPS passed nationally. At the federal level, the term is Renewable Energy Standard (RES), but it’s the same concept – a requirement for the amount of clean electricity to rise over time.

I’m so proud I was part of the fight to get to the AEPS enacted. It’s kind of a shame it’s such a wonky issue that I can’t easily explain it to friends. But, as my committed clergy friends would say, they take it on faith that it’s a big deal.

9 more coal plants (5 in Pennsylvania) to bite the dust, thanks in large part to gas

In a continually unfolding piece of good environmental news, tough new air pollution requirements and fuel switching to natural gas are combining to close more highly-polluting and climate-disrupting coal-fired power plants.

Yesterday, GenOn announced plans to deactivate seven coal-fired power plants totalling 3,140 MW of generating capacity. Five of those plants are located in Pennsylvania; two are in Ohio, and one is in New Jersey.


And in Chicago, Fisk and Crawford reached an agreement to close two controversial coal plants that sit in – and harm - some of the city’s densest neighborhoods.

According to Reuters, so far more than 30,000 MW of U.S. coal-fired power plants will be retired over the next decade. Gas fired plants are displacing coal in record numbers. Since 2000, the market share of gas for electricity generation has risen from 16 to 26 percent, while coal's market share has declined 52 to 42.5 percent.

The switch from goal to gas is saving lives. Every year, pollution from coal-fired power plants causes 23,600 premature deaths; 21,850 hospital admissions; 554,000 asthma attacks; and 38,200 heart attacks. Gas is vastly cleaner than coal when it comes to emissions of pollutants like soot, mercury, lead, arsenic, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide. It also uses less water and requires no ash disposal.

The closures are also a victory in the battle against global climate disruption. Gas is 50 percent cleaner than coal when it comes to CO2 emissions from electricity production. And while methane emissions from production and distribution of gas must be scrutinized and minimized, it’s clear that major environmental improvements are unfolding in part because of the shale gas boom.

This only underscores the importance of – and the opportunity in - addressing all of the problems associated with gas production, so that the shale gas production can truly be an environmental victory that grows the economy.

HB 1950 is hazardous to your health

There is a lot wrong with HB 1950 – Pennsylvania’s natural gas impact fee legislation that was quietly signed into law this week by Governor Tom Corbett. But as more folks pore over the 173-page tome – after all, there wasn’t much time at all between its unveiling and passage – more and more troubling details are coming to light.

A guest commentary posted on FracTracker by public health expert Jerome A. Paulson, MD, FAAP is a particularly disturbing and must-read case in point. He discusses the limits that the legislation places on physicians’ access to information on chemicals used in gas production for treating their own patients, including requirements for doctors to sign non-disclosure agreements to protect industry “trade secrets.” More on Dr.Paulson’s comments here.

It’s more than a bit ironic that Governor Corbett’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission report recommended some transparency around the public health effects of deep gas drilling. It suggested that the state’s Department of Health collect and evaluate clinical data provided by health care providers, track the health of people living near gas drilling sites, and establish a system to provide for the “timely and thorough” investigation of and response to concerns and complaints raised by (among others) health care providers. The report also called for educating health care providers and the public on illnesses that may be caused by drilling chemicals.

It looks like some of those recommendations would be weakened, made difficult, or even outlawed by the absurdly over-the-top, industry-friendly language of HB 1950.

Some respected public health experts have called for national moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in populated areas until the health effects are better understood. Good luck with gaining that understanding in Pennsylvania under HB 1950.

Ten reasons to kill the Keystone XL Pipeline idea

The Senate could vote on the Keystone pipeline soon!

Call our senators right now:
Sen. Casey (202) 224-6324
Sen. Toomey (202) 224-4254

Tell them to "Vote No on the Keystone pipeline."

It's fine to leave a message on voice mail; just be sure to include your name, municipality and zip code. Thank you.

The Keystone XL pipeline is a really bad idea whose time should never come. Here's why:

1. The Keystone XL pipeline would carry toxic tar sands oil 1,700 miles from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico to be refined and exported.
2. Tar sands are the most carbon-intensive source of oil on the planet — just the production creates three times as much global warming pollution as conventional crude oil.
3. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates the pipeline would add 27 million metric tons of heat-trapping CO2 annually.
4. The pipeline would do little for our energy security or our domestic economy. Its main purpose is to make this oil available for export.
5. The refineries on the Gulf Coast at the end of the pipeline are in Foreign Trade Zones where oil can be exported to international buyers without paying U.S. taxes.
6. The pipeline threatens America's water resources. Tar sands oil is more acidic and corrosive than conventional oil and is transported under higher pressure, posing a far greater risk of blowouts in the pipeline.
7. Over the last five years, pipelines in Midwestern states with the longest history of moving Canadian tar sands have spilled three times as much crude per mile as the national average.
8. These tar sands pipelines are not environmentally safe. The Keystone I pipeline was predicted to spill 1.4 times per decade, yet spilled 14 times in just the first year of operation.
9. In summer 2011, an older tar sands pipeline spilled more than 800,000 gallons into Michigan's Kalamazoo River — at $725 million, the most expensive U.S. pipeline accident on record.
10. We cannot ensure the security of the nearly 2,000 mile pipeline, making it a target for terrorists.

The facts are clear: This pipeline is bad for our environment, our economy, and our security.

We need clean energy, used wisely and without wasting it, to build our 21st economy.

President Obama doesn't want the pipeline. The American people don't want this pipeline.

It's time for Congress to kill it. For good.

Is the gas bridge collapsing, or does it just need shoring up?

A must-read article published this week in the journal Nature reports on a study that estimates that about 4 percent of the natural gas being produced in an area known as the Denver-Julesburg Basin of Colorado is being released to the atmosphere — and that figure does not include additional pipeline and distribution system losses. This is more than double the official EPA estimate of methane emissions from gas production. And it is very troubling data.

Because methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere, releases of that magnitude – if they prove typical of the industry - could effectively negate the clear climate disruption emissions advantage that natural gas has compared to coal-fired electricity generation.

According to the article, the Denver-Julesburg Basin is mainly a tight sand formation, not a shale formation. But gas extraction there uses the same hydraulic fracturing technology used in shale gas plays. Is what’s happening in Colorado typical of the industry nation-wide (and world-wide)? We urgently need more research to find out. There is no time to lose.

Capturing and storing methane emissions from the fracking process is feasible. Industry claims, though, that these measures are too costly to adopt. EPA is set this spring to release methane emissions regulations that they say can actually save industry money. In light of the Nature report, those regs may need to be tightened further.

If natural gas is to serve as a bridge to a renewable energy future, methane emissions must be reduced. Immediately. Regardless of apparent cost. Because the cost to the climate of uncontrolled methane emissions from fracking is far too high.

Otherwise, natural gas will indeed be a bridge to nowhere.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on DCNR’s proposed budget

Here is my quick take on the governor’s proposed budget for the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for Fiscal Year 2012-2013.

First, the good – in fact, the very good. Many have feared that the governor would propose new leasing of state forest land this year to help balance the state budget. For the second year in a row, despite facing huge fiscal challenges, Gov. Corbett has not proposed any additional state forest leasing. 

Thank you, Gov. Corbett.

Now the bad. This year’s budget proposal continues the relentless cuts that the agency has faced for half a decade. This year’s proposal cuts DCNR’s general fund budget by another 5 percent. DCNR’s proposed 2012-13 general fund budget is only about two-thirds of what it was when the agency was created 17 years ago. Worse, the state’s conservation agency is still dependent on gas drilling for its operating budget - $69.5 million in gas royalties from the Oil and Gas Lease Fund is proposed to be used to fund DCNR operations – 1.4 times the general fund appropriation, and DCNR’s largest single source of operating money. Almost $20 million of royalties is being used to keep state parks open – at significantly reduced levels of service. State forest operations fare even worse – its general fund appropriation is less than $5.5 million. $45 million in gas royalties and timber sales are keeping the state forest going.

The bottom line: Pennsylvania’s conservation agency is dependent on resource extraction for its operating budget. Is that conservation? Is it sustainable? Those are two very important questions with major implications for Pennsylvania’s environment, economy, and quality of life.

Now for the ugly. Funding for forestry regeneration – planting trees in the state forest to improve forest health and productivity – has been cut 75 percent, and forestry research has been zeroed out. But the ugliest of all is that funding for park and forestry rehabilitation, grants for community recreation, and grants to land trusts for open space conservation have been zeroed out. Over $46 million that would otherwise have gone to those uses has been transferred from the Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund to the General Fund. This is a huge disinvestment in the public lands and in communities statewide.

These are difficult times for Pennsylvania’s conservation agency, and for the state where the conservation movement began.

Seven deadly sins of HB 1950

It’s business as usual here in Harrisburg.

Legislative leaders have secretly negotiated a "compromise" drilling bill and circulated a draft conference committee report on House Bill 1950 – before a conference committee had been named.

If the leaders had formed the conference committee first, Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act would have required their meetings to be open to the public. By not forming the committee until after the negotiations were complete, the House and Senate leaders skillfully prevented the public from scrutinizing the secret deals made to get this bill passed.

And what a bill it is!­ A quick reading of the proposed legislation makes it easy to see why the Republican leaders would not want the sun shining on their back door deals. 

The conference committee report being circulated has the same fundamental flaws as earlier versions – the “impact fee” being proposed is an insult to Pennsylvania taxpayers; the small amount of revenue directed to local municipalities comes at an exorbitant cost, because the legislation eviscerates the ability of local government to have any say in how, whether and where drilling will occur in their communities; and the supposed improved environmental protection standards turn out to be a total sham. The leaders who crafted this deal should be ashamed.

Here are seven deadly sins against Pennsylvania citizens and local governments that are sprinkled like land mines throughout the 173-page bill:

The first deadly sin:

·         The legislation not only removes the ability of local municipalities to use their traditional zoning powers to manage where and when drilling will occur, the proposed bill also takes away the right for any municipality to legally challenge a permit decision by DEP that the local government believes is not in the best interest of its community. It may not be unconstitutional for Harrisburg legislators to take away the right of local leaders to represent the interest of their communities when it comes to this new industry, but it should be.

The second deadly sin:

·         The legislation would use impact fee revenue to assess the quality of groundwater across Pennsylvania instead of insisting that the companies that may harm our resources establish those pre-drill conditions. Every other industry in Pennsylvania that could potentially impact groundwater - from landfill operators to mining companies - must establish baseline conditions before engaging in whatever business that risks damaging our precious resources. But this bill would take what limited revenue is being raised by the weak impact fee, turns right around, and gives it back to the drilling companies, instead of using it to address the impacts of drilling, where the revenue is badly needed.

The third deadly sin:

·         The legislation treats gas drillers that violate Pennsylvania’s environmental laws differently from other industries in the state. Environmental laws that regulate every other industry in Pennsylvania prevent DEP from issuing permits to applicants if DEP finds that the applicant is violating the law elsewhere in the state. But under this bill, DEP cannot deny a permit to a driller even if they are violating the law at another site in the state, unless DEP takes a final action on those other violations. That requirement does not apply to any other industry in Pennsylvania, and it severely limits an important tool that DEP has used throughout the years to leverage a company’s desire for a permit to ensuring compliance with the law across the state. 

The fourth deadly sin:

·         The provisions that purport to improve setback requirements for wells from homes and drinking water supplies are a sham. What the dealmakers won’t tell the public is that DEP must grant a variance from these setback provisions if it would deprive a gas well operator of any oil or gas rights, or if the permit applicant says they will implement additional protective measures. Consequently, DEP has regularly granted waivers of the existing setback requirements, and this provision ensures that practice will continue into the future.

The fifth deadly sin:

·         The setback requirements do not even apply to small, ecologically sensitive intermittent streams or small wetlands.

The sixth deadly sin:

·         The legislation strictly limits DEP’s ability to put conditions on gas drilling operations that may harm a public resource like a park or state forestland. Before any condition can be imposed, the conditions must be promulgated in the same way regulations by the Environmental Quality Board are. Once again, this runs contrary to how every other industry in Pennsylvania is regulated, where DEP regularly imposes conditions in permits necessary to protect the public health and safety, and the environment. But here, when it comes to protecting the public’s most vital resources, DEP must stand with its hands in its figurative pants until the EQB promulgates conditions to be used by DEP. And even then, when DEP determines that extra measures are needed to protect a public resource, the legislation imposes an extra heavy burden on DEP to show a need for the special condition.

The seventh deadly sin:

·         Finally, the legislation fails to establish a public record for tracking where gas drillers are disposing of the waste flowback water from the wells. The proposed law requires operators to keep track of the fate of waste fluids taken off the well site, but those records do not need to be shared with DEP unless the agency requests the records. This means that DEP will have no regular ability to track where and how much waste is being transported from well sites throughout the Commonwealth, and will have little ability to ensure that wastes are being properly managed.

Secret backroom deal near on drilling bill

Capitol Hill insiders are saying that a secret backroom deal on the drilling legislation could be finalized over the weekend and voted as early as Monday in the Senate and Tuesday in the House.

If Republican leadership followed the High School Civics version of the legislative process, here’s how it would go: the two different drilling bills passed by the House and Senate would be given to a House-Senate conference committee comprised of four Republicans and two Democrats to negotiate a final compromise bill in public.

But here’s what we hear is really happening: Gov. Corbett, Republican legislative leaders, and the gas drillers are meeting in secret to make a deal, and that deal will be presented to the conference committee as a fait accompli on short notice on Monday. The two Democratic members of the conference committee may not even have seen the final deal, let alone have had an opportunity to shape it. The committee will approve it, and if the Republicans hold their members, the Senate will pass it six hours later. It would reach the House floor on Tuesday for a vote.

The real question here is – can Senate Republican leaders sell this deal to their members. This week nine Republican senators wrote to Senators Scarnati and Pileggi, stating their opposition to the provision that pre-empts local governments from using their zoning power to manage drilling in their communities. Given that the governor wrote back to the leadership of both Senate caucuses to indicate his inflexibility on the matter, the support of those nine senators – votes that will be essential to Senate passage of the bills -  is in question.

The starting point for the back room negotiations was bad – the House and Senate both passed unacceptable drilling bills, so we don’t expect that we will like and support what comes out of this process.

An ounce of prevention

If you’ve followed the progress of Marcellus Shale development in Pennsylvania, or paid attention at all to the rapid growth in shale gas production nationally, you’ve no doubt heard or read a familiar statement – indeed, mantra - from the gas industry that hydraulic fracturing has never contaminated groundwater. While there is some evidence to the contrary in Wyoming (though the particulars of the case -- drilling depths in particular -- don't appear to be analogous with Pennsylvania), there is a lot riding on that claim. The fact is, over 90% of new gas wells in this country rely on fracking, and our use of natural gas in electricity generation is on the rise.

With that rise comes increased risk. That’s not just my opinion. Far more importantly, The National Groundwater Association thinks so, too.

NGWA is the largest association of groundwater professionals in the world. Last November, they issued a position paper on hydraulic fracturing. It’s essential reading.

NGWA, while recognizing that hydraulic fracturing is a mature technology that has been in use in the US since 1947, nevertheless calls for additional scientific study and research on the potential for groundwater contamination from fracking. For proper construction and maintenance of gas (and oil) wells, the lack of which has caused severe pollution incidents. For identification and sealing of abandoned oil and gas wells – there could be over 180,000 of them in Pennsylvania alone – that present a major potential contamination pathway. For domestic water well construction standards; Pennsylvania inexplicably is one of only three states in the nation without them. For use alternative sources of water to limit use of freshwater for fracking (something that's under consideration in PA). For testing of water wells before gas wells are drilled. For disclosure of all fracking chemicals. And, because contamination from drilling or surface spills can lag for months or years because natural groundwater moves s-l-o-w-l-y, strong monitoring, financial responsibility, and liability provisions in state and/or Federal law.

NGWA’s commonsense advice is certainly worth a pound of cure.