DEP Issues Air Pollution Rules for Gas Drilling Sites

Washington PA  Observer Reporter
14 October 2011

HARRISBURG - State environmental regulators will follow new guidelines endorsed by a natural gas industry group for deciding how to group together facilities such as wells, dehydrators and compressors when enforcing air pollution standards on Pennsylvania's booming drilling activity.

The Department of Environmental Protection issued the new guidelines Wednesday and opened them up for public comment until Nov. 21. The guidelines drew immediate criticism from clean air advocates, who say they will allow the industry to pollute more and weaken the ability of state regulators to gauge how much pollution the industry is creating.

Facilities that pollute more are subject to tougher pollution control standards. A group of minor polluters treated as separate entities, however, would be subject to less stringent standards.

Faced with a natural gas drilling boom that has sullied the air in some parts of the country, states have started to crack down on some emissions from well sites. People living near drilling activity in other states have complained of breathing trouble or other health problems.

In the meantime, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering adopting tougher rules for air pollution at oil and gas well sites that focus on getting operators to capture and sell natural gas that now escapes into the air.

The issue is getting more attention in Pennsylvania because of the rapidly growing exploration of the Marcellus Shale formation, a vast rock formation beneath Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, New York and portions of other states that's believed to contain one of the biggest deposits of natural gas in the world.

To be grouped together, or aggregated, different sources of air pollution must belong to the same industrial grouping, located on one or more contiguous or adjacent properties and must be under the control of the same person, the Pennsylvania DEP said.

In Pennsylvania, the DEP said its technical guidance interprets the words "contiguous or adjacent" in regulations to mean the distance or spatial relationship between locations.

The approach is practical and common-sensical, DEP Secretary Michael Krancer said Wednesday.

"Over time, there was a tendency by some regulators to morph the meaning of 'contiguous' or 'adjacent' properties to mean only that operations on the properties be 'interdependent,"' Krancer said.

That view has been expressed in various EPA recommendation letters or policy statements in recent years, Krancer said. But he said that interpretation is inconsistent with federal case law and state regulations, which mirror federal regulations.

The Citizens Voice of Wilkes-Barre reported that an industry group, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, last year urged the state not to group air pollution sources that are not contiguous or adjacent, even if they are connected by pipelines. Instead, the group recommended a quarter-mile rule that several other states follow and which the Pennsylvania DEP said it would follow.

"This is essentially what the oil and gas industry asks every state for," said Joe Osborne, the legal director of Group Against Smog and Pollution, a Pittsburgh-based environmental advocate.

And while Krancer said the DEP will continue to apply the guidelines on a case-by-case basis, Osborne said a compressor station and the well pads that feed into it are often more than a quarter-mile apart. Treating them as separate entities will allow them to pollute more, he said.

"The reality is that if you place a limit on this of a quarter-mile, there are lots of things that common sense would dictate that are a single source that would be left out," said Osborne, who is also a member of the DEP's Air Quality Technical Advisory Committee.

If well sites are not grouped with bigger facilities, such as compressors, they may not need permits at all, which means that state inspectors may not know that the sites even exist or check to see whether they are meeting pollution standards, Osborne said.

The new guidelines take effect immediately but are considered interim for now.