The Hellbender Chronicles: July 2004 Archives

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July 27, 2004

Allegheny National Forest Bicycle Ride

Posted by jkleissler at 04:16 PM | Comments (3)

July 22, 2004

ADP Testifies Before Citizen Advisory Council

Things are busy here but I thought we could at least share excerpts of our recent testimony before the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's Citizen Advisory Council. The testimony was written on short notice but comments and criticisms are welcome. There is a lot more that we could have said.

DEP Citizens Advisory Council Testimony
James Kleissler, Forest Watch Director
July 20, 2004

This testimony is being provided tonight on behalf of the Allegheny Defense Project. We are a non-profit conservation organization with concern regarding oil & gas drilling on public lands within the northwest region. This testimony is based on our experience in reviewing thousands of well permits, monitoring of hundreds of oil & gas well sites in the Allegheny National Forest and on state lands, and our familiarity with the ecology of the upper Allegheny River watershed.

Oil & Gas Management
Northwestern Pennsylvania is the original oil region of North America. Because of this we have a 150 year legacy of oil and gas drilling accompanied with both the economic and ecological fallout of this boom and bust industry. While technologies have advanced, the impacts from oil & gas drilling have changed more than they have improved. The sensitivity of the forest environment to oil & gas drilling is of great import, however it appears to be little understood by both state and federal agencies alike. It is our hope that this Advisory Council can take the necessary steps to bring state review of oil & gas management into the 21st Century.

eFacts, Electronic Permitting, PA*IRIS, and Other Business Services
Simply following oil & gas permitting processes can be a challenge. The entire permitting process is secretive until a permit is actually issued. In order to follow permit issuances effectively one must visit the Northwest Regional Office on a regular basis and review well plats posted in the file review room. This requires an appointment that must be scheduled at least one week in advance.

Information posted on the citizen�s eFACTS website is either out of date or too vague to be useful. Often times, thousands of permits can exist for single townships and the names of well sites and farms are often too ambiguous to be useful. This is complicated by the constant shifting in ownership of wells, mineral rights, and other relevant facts.

The state has developed an internet based system on which well permit information is maintained. However, this information is not available to the public but only to wealthy private interests such as oil businesses who can write subscriptions off on their taxes. The public can apparently view the database in Pittsburgh with an appointment, but this hardly provides the same service that the state has provided industry.

�The Pennsylvania Internet Record Imaging System (PA*IRIS) (Figure 1) combines the Pennsylvania Geological Survey�s Wells Information System and Oil and Gas Base Map GIS system with scanned images of corresponding oil and gas documents. The unique characteristic of PA*IRIS is that it is available on the worldwide web 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

PA*IRIS is a public/private partnership between the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) and over 60 oil and gas companies throughout the United States and Canada. It provides Internet access to more than 600,000 pages of scanned documents covering current and historical location plats, well record and completion reports, and plugging certificates. Figures 2 and 3 provide examples of the PA*IRIS interface and documents that can be retrieved remotely through the system.�

It is incomprehensible to understand why this database and other permitting information is not made available to the public on a timely basis with the ease and convenience allowed to industry. Industry can afford to send staff to DEP offices to review well permitting details. The costs to conservation-minded citizens and organizations operating on shoe-string budgets are difficult to comprehend when this information is already available on the internet 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.

We are concerned as citizens that our rights to protect our interests in these matters are sacrificed by the lack of a public participation process in oil & gas well permitting and the lack of immediate access to details regarding issued permits. With no opportunity to comment, the public has only one avenue by which to redress grievances regarding proposed permits � appeals before the Environmental Hearing Board. However, Citizens only have 30 days to file such an appeal and rarely know when a given permit has been issued less than two weeks after it has already been posted. This process hurts both industry and the public by forcing a costly, timely appeals process where possible concerns may have otherwise been resolved.

National Forest Management
When myself and another citizen filed such an appeal before the EHB in 2001, the Department�s Oil & Gas Management Staff which had been approving well permits for years in the Allegheny National Forest knew absolutely nothing about forest management direction for the areas affected. Thus permits were approved for areas for which oil & gas drilling was intended to be a minor, if at all, presence in the national forest. No serious consideration was given to the impacts to this public resource although the Pennsylvania Oil & Gas Act requires these considerations.

Our reviews suggest that little has changed in this regard. The permit applications now recognize the Management Area (a zoning system employed in national forests) within which proposed wells far but little more than that basic recognition. There is no analysis regarding how those proposed wells affect the integrity of the public resource regardless of its importance.

A classic case of this is the recent approval of oil & gas well management initiated by Catalyst Energy in Warrant 3773, Elk County. This development includes several dozen proposed and drilled oil & gas wells. This development occurs in an Exceptional Value Watershed and State Designated Wilderness Trout Stream. The development impacts a national forest roadless area and occurs immediately adjacent to a National Natural Landmark. This is also an area proposed for federal Wilderness designation by two conservation organizations. While we are still reviewing the documents related to approval of this development, significant issues appear to be entirely unaddressed in any kind of written review or analysis.

An ongoing difficulty with accessing Department review and approval of oil & gas proposals is the lack of any kind of written record clearly defining the rationale in approving such projects event when they are proposed in sensitive public lands areas. It is entirely unclear to the public how the Department is serving its Constitutional role of protecting our public resources.

The permitting process for oil & gas activity is plagued by some questionable public/private business relationships. The revolving door between important agency positions and the industries they are meant to regulate is a growing concern for oil & gas as it is for many other activities. This appearance is not helped by what primarily appears to be a rubber stamp permitting process geared more towards an easy application process for industry than an easy public review process for the citizens of Pennsylvania. Insult is added to injury by repeated slaps on the wrists of industry for serious infractions of environmental protection laws.

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