Frack Check WV » Congress

Many States Affected by the Supreme Court Decision in “WV vs. EPA”

Duane Nichols — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 00:32:13 +0000

Mother Earth is getting no respect in WV or at the Supreme Court

Pennsylvania reaction to the Supreme Court’s climate decision
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From an Article of The Allegheny Front, Pittsburgh, July 1, 2022
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This week, Pennsylvania environment and energy leaders react to the Supreme Court’s EPA climate ruling. Plus, we revisit stories in the series Farmers Wanted, which examines the challenges of cultivating a new generation of farmers in Pennsylvania. We also have a conversation with the author of a speculative novel about survival after climate disaster and plastic pollution.

And, we have news about air quality in Allegheny County, and a Pittsburgh visit by the U.S. Energy Secretary, who said the fight against climate change is the “war of our lifetimes.”

Now we are closer to the ‘climate cliff’ if not in a climate emergency! In a 6-3 majority decision, the Supreme Court struck down a now-defunct rule by the Obama EPA that would have shifted electricity generation away from coal to cleaner natural gas, wind and solar. “A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority.

Environmental groups, state officials, the coal industry and lawyers weigh in:

David Masur, executive director of PennEnvironment: “The Supreme Court just made the monumental task of cleaning up our air and reducing climate-warming pollution much, much harder. We have limited time to reign in our climate pollution, before we fall off a climate cliff from which the planet cannot come back.”

Rachel Gleason, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance: “Coal’s a global commodity. So it really has ebbs and flows depending on what is happening globally. Because of Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, there’s a global energy crisis…and right now, [Europe is] turning their coal plants back on, so I think these kinds of overreaching policy decisions are not meant for bureaucratic agencies that change every four or eight years.”

Alex Bomstein, director of litigation for Clean Air Council: He said these types of “major questions” arguments could now be pushed more often. “Whether the Pennsylvania courts decide to take those parties up on that and try to adopt federal law as Pennsylvania law is a question I don’t know the answer to and I think we’ll be watching.”

Rob Altenburg, director for energy and climate for PennFuture: “We don’t know what the next step is going to be, but we do know that we need to get to net-zero by 2050. We have an Environmental Rights Amendment…and the Air Pollution Control Act…so this decision isn’t applicable to the state.”

John Dernbach, director of the Environmental Law and Sustainability Center at Widener University Commonwealth Law School: He said it’s “distressing” that the court took up the case when it didn’t have to, as a vehicle for limiting executive power. He doesn’t see the ruling affecting the Wolf Administration’s attempt to regulate CO2 because Pennsylvania has its own law governing air pollution that gives the state DEP authority, as well as an Environmental Rights Amendment.

Ramez Ziadeh, Acting Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection: “The ruling undercuts good-faith efforts to fight climate change, but that does not mean we will stop fighting.”

A major effort of the Wolf administration has been joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cap-and-trade program with 11 other states to reduce carbon emissions from power plants. But Pennsylvania’s participation in RGGI hinges on the state’s next governor. Republican nominee Doug Mastriano has promised to remove the state from RGGI on his first day, if elected, while Democratic nominee Josh Shapiro has expressed doubts about RGGI.

THE ALLEGHENY FRONT, 67 BEDFORD SQUARE, PITTSBURGH, PA 15203

Contact Email Address ~ info@alleghenyfront.org

Another Loophole Proposed to Block States Access to Info on Frack Chemicals

Duane Nichols — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:31:37 +0000

Looking for Loopholes w/ 3D Glasses

Proposed new legislation would undo state laws on fracking toxics

Press Release from John Rumpler and Lauren Pagel, Environment America, April 28, 2014

With “trade secrets” claim debunked, proposed changes are clearly aimed at hiding toxic substances from the public.

The current draft of the Chemicals in Commerce Act (CICA), made public today, would add another special oil and gas industry loophole to federal environmental law. CICA, legislation that aims to “reform” the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), would block states and localities from requiring the oil and gas industry to reveal the toxics they inject through the water table during hydraulic fracturing. The legislation would also prohibit states or localities from regulating or banning toxic chemicals used in the drilling and fracking process, such as benzene and diesel fuel.

As hydraulic fracturing has facilitated the extraction of shale oil & gas across the country, affected states and communities have increasingly required some form of public disclosure of the chemicals used during fracking.

“Oil and gas industry apologists in Congress have sunk to a new low,” said Lauren Pagel, Policy Director for Earthworks. “This toxics reform legislation risks public health in favor of energy industry profits. It would undo even modest efforts by states to protect and inform the public about fracking risks.”

Nationwide, toxic fluids and waste from fracking are polluting our air and water and making nearby residents sick. There are more than one thousand documented instances of fracking-enabled oil and gas development contaminating water – from the residential wells in Dimock, PA to the more than 400 waste pits that have leached into groundwater in New Mexico alone.

Last week Baker Hughes Inc., one of the nation’s three major hydraulic fracturing service companies, promised to disclose all chemicals they use in fracking:
“It’s obvious that there’s no compelling reason to hide fracking chemicals behind a ‘trade secrets’ claim,” said Lauren Pagel. She continued, “Baker Hughes’s promise makes clear that the purpose of this bill is to hide fracking toxics from the public, not protect trade secrets from competitors.”

But the oil and gas lobby has rebuffed efforts to close the loopholes that exempt their drilling operations from key provisions of federal environmental laws – maintaining that the states know best when it comes to regulation of oil and gas.

“Fracking is a major toxic threat to our air and water,” said John Rumpler, senior attorney for Environment America. “Yet the Shimkus TSCA bill belies the utter hypocrisy of the industry’s ‘states-first’ positioning by stripping away the ability of state and local governments to rein in the toxic pollution from dirty drilling.”

For More Information:
Waxman-Tonko letter to Chairman Shimkus

Wise Advice on the Regulation of Natural Gas Drilling/Fracking

Duane Nichols — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 14:58:12 +0000

: Jody Freeman, Harvard Law School

Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor, was the White House counselor for energy and climate change in 2009 and 2010. Here is her letter to the New York Times entitled “The Wise Way to Regulate Gas Drilling:”

AMERICA’S energy future has been transformed by the production of natural gas made possible by hydraulic fracturing. This gas is a much cleaner source of electricity than coal. The problem is that the fracturing process used to extract the gas can, if done improperly, pollute surface and drinking water and emit dangerous air pollution.

States like Texas, Pennsylvania and New York are now rushing to impose their own rules. But what we really need is a system of federal oversight that will promote confidence in this technique and provide the industry with uniform standards without overregulating it.

The federal government has the power to regulate some but not all the risks. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency has set standards to control emissions of toxic and greenhouse gases from the drilling process and is considering new rules for polluted wastewater. But in 2005, Congress exempted the fracturing process itself — a process in which huge quantities of water, sand and toxic chemicals are injected into tight shale rock, to force open the rock and capture the gas trapped within — from federal regulation.

The states have moved forward with a patchwork of regulations — some specific and prescriptive, others vague and general. Many states require some disclosure of the chemicals the drillers use, but in some states drillers decide which chemicals constitute proprietary secrets and therefore do not have to be disclosed. Some states allow operators to store toxic wastewater from the fracturing process in open pits, risking surface or groundwater contamination. Some states simply lack the experience or resources to enforce their standards.

The uneven approach is bad not only for the environment but also for industry, because under the current system, mistakes by a few bad apples could lead to overregulation or even outright bans on drilling.

A better approach is one already reflected in many environmental laws: cooperative federalism. The federal government sets baseline standards, which states can exceed but not fall below. Ideally, these would be general “performance standards” rather than detailed specifications, giving the states flexibility to meet them.

States might be required to develop comprehensive plans to manage environmental risks. These plans could account for regional differences and would be based on best practices for disclosure, drilling location, well construction and wastewater treatment. States would implement and enforce the rules and issue and oversee the operating permits. The federal government could step in if states abdicated their responsibility. Such a regulatory system — with minimum federal standards as well as state plans — has been in place for coal mining since 1977.

For this to work, Congress must lift the regulatory exemptions for hydraulic fracturing. This would allow the E.P.A. to set minimum requirements for the drilling process, which states would implement through federally approved programs. The E.P.A. and the Interior Department, which regulates gas drilling on federal lands, could then establish a clear, comprehensive and consistent federal framework for hydraulic fracturing. The cost would be reasonable: the International Energy Agency recently estimated that adequate environmental protections could increase drilling costs by 7 percent.

Some might say that a federal role isn’t necessary. But pollution risks go beyond state borders. If natural gas extraction is a national priority, its safety and efficacy should be of national concern, too. The Obama administration has taken some initial steps to coordinate the federal government’s approach but has been timid about calling for a stronger federal role. Only a national regulatory system can strike the right balance, simultaneously realizing hydraulic fracturing’s energy promise and minimizing the risks while respecting state authority.

Chesapeake Fined for Groundwater Contamination, Resumes Hydraulic Fracturing; Congress Pursues Safety Study

Nicole Good — Thu, 19 May 2011 04:17:32 +0000

After an improper casing on one of Chesapeake Energy’s Marcellus wells led to the contamination of private water supplies for 16 families in Bradford County, Pa in 2010, and a tank fire injured three workers in February, Pennsylvania DEP has charged the company with the largest single fine it has ever issued to an oil and gas driller– nearly $1.1 million. In addition to the fines, the families affected by these incidents are pursuing legal action. The contamination of the Bradford County wells with methane and the fine imposed are unrelated to the recent blowout of a Chesapeake well and the stream contamination related to that event in the same county. This announcement comes only days after Chesapeake Energy declared that it would resume hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania, having voluntarily suspending operations for three weeks in response to a blowout in Bradford County. This incident, along with the recent Duke study linking hydraulic fracturing to groundwater contamination, have caused Congress to create a new panel to evaluate the safety of hydraulic fracturing. Set up by the US Department of Energy, the panel will present its preliminary recommendations to Congress in 90 days.