The Delaware River Basin Commission’s (DRBC) has proposed a set of regulations for natural gas drilling in state watersheds.
The 83-page proposal includes giving drilling companies incentives to drill away from forested areas and the banks of streams and requiring all wastewater be contained in tanks rather than deposited in open waterways as has been done in the past. New to the discussion are the commission’s plans to allow for broad leases for drilling rather than those for individual wells; a provision the commission hopes will help keep wells out of environmentally sensitive areas.
To incentivize what the commission’s executive director Carol R. Collier calls “good environmental practices,” the commission will also consider shortening the approval process to as little as 30 days for low-impact projects.
Because the rules were proposed without being backed up by an environmental study that so many environmentalists and residents had called for, it is receiving some harsh criticism from groups like the New Jersey Sierra Club.
In the commission’s defense, Collier said the group acted now in order to make the public aware of the direction they are progressing in. Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger supports this notion calling the DRBC’s rules “a good first step.”
Though most drillers and their associates refrained from commenting, Marcellus Shale Coalition president Kathryn Klaber released a broad and hopeful sentiment that the rules are a “common-sense road map aimed at safely leveraging the Marcellus Shale’s clean-burning natural gas reserves into a supply of clean fuel and thousand s of good-paying jobs.”
A drilling moratorium that began in May will stay in effect until the rules are formally adopted.
