Under Siege by Marcellus Marauders
Pennsylvania must adequately regulate and tax gas companies before
opening the Marcellus Shale to rampaging exploitation, argues labor
professor CHARLES McCOLLESTER
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
13 June 2010
Pennsylvanians are only slowly becoming aware that we are under siege.
More than a thousand Marcellus Shale drill sites are in the works, with
tens of thousands more poised to descend on Penn's Woods, its towns and
neighborhoods, threatening to poison water tables, suck streams dry,
pollute the air with ear-splitting noise and toxic fumes -- all without
meaningful regulation, without meaningful taxation.
Like coal, which successfully resisted a severance tax, leaving
taxpayers and volunteer associations to wrestle with the social and
environmental damage wrought by more than a century of exploitation,
gas drillers enabled by politicians expect Pennsylvania to remain the
only major gas-producing state without a severance tax. These
deep-drilled deposits of natural gas will be severed from the
commonwealth forever without compensation and with little or no
enforceable liability for the devastation wrought on the land, water
and air. We cannot allow this to happen!
Without labor protections, community protections, landowner protections
and public health protections, we cannot allow this toxic invasion to
proceed.
Federal exemptions under the Clean Water Act for deep gas drilling need
to be reversed by the Obama administration, but we can't wait for
federal action. Pennsylvania has a tool it can use. We need rigorous
enforcement of the Pennsylvania Worker and Community Right-to-Know Act
of 1984 passed in the wake of the Bhopal tragedy in India, which:
• Mandates that Material Safety Data Sheets on all chemicals used in
industry be made readily available to all workers on any site where
dangerous chemicals are present. This should apply to every drill site
without exception. Deep drilling is a dangerous and generally
nonunionized industry of transient workers who have few rights or
protections.
• Gives the community the right to know the types and amounts of
chemicals that are being emitted into the air or discharged into the
waters. Shale gas is extracted by injecting huge amounts of water, sand
and chemicals to fracture rock deep underground. How can
water-treatment facilities possibly begin to deal with cleaning our
drinking and bathing water of the infusion of extremely salty fracking
liquid laced with highly toxic chemical agents if, under the guise of
proprietary rights, companies will not reveal their names and known
characteristics? Many believe fracking fluids disposed in old coal
mines broke out into Dunkard Creek last fall's devastating stream life
and then entering the Monongahela River, tainting water supplies.
According to fishermen, there are noticeable declines this year in
local fish populations in watersheds that have just begun to recover
from industrial pollution, acid mine drainage and sewage overflows.
• Requires emergency re-sponse personnel to be provided information on
the identity, quantities and placement of toxic chemicals and requires
that an emergency plan be coordinated with local community fire and
emergency response organizations. The volunteer firefighters dealing
with a gas well fire in Clearfield County would have been well served
if our laws had been enforced.
As recent gas well explosions in Texas, Clearfield County and
Moundsville, W.Va., illustrate, the soothing platitudinous reassurances
of slick public relations men and the politicians who have stuffed
their campaign chests full of gas money are to be accorded the same
weight and credibility as those relentlessly green energy ads foisted
on us by British Petroleum for the past several years. With the
horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by green-washed BP revealing
lies, criminal negligence, self-delusion, disregard for worker safety,
obstruction of justice, total indifference to environmental health ...
for the sake of our children and grandchildren, we can do better, we
must do better.
Without adequate regulation, without serious taxation that strengthens
environmental enforcement and helps support vital public services like
education and public transportation in a time of economic crisis,
without clear uncapped liability rules that assign and enforce
responsibility for irresponsible actions, without preservation of
property rights by blocking the indirect destruction of the value of
people's homes and lands, without significant public money to repair
the roads and bridges that will be damaged by the invasion of heavy
equipment bearing down on us, without protections for fish and
wildlife, we must stop the drilling.
Substantial levels of taxation could provide tax credits as incentives
for companies to hire Pennsylvanians employed at drill sites, on
transmission lines and in compressor stations. Most employment at
present is from out of state. We must draw a line in the sand here and
now in Pennsylvania!
The U.S. Constitution defines the purpose of government: to provide for
the common defense and promote the general welfare. Government on all
levels is failing its purpose.
Our commonwealth lies defenseless, naked, open to despoliation and
degradation without even the meager benefits of prostitution that
provides at least some payment for services rendered. We need an
immediate and complete moratorium on drilling until we can
intelligently adopt adequate regulations and guarantee substantial tax
revenues for environmental and labor law enforcement as well as other
critical state needs in a time of economic crisis.
Dr. Charles McCollester is a recently retired professor of Industrial
and Labor Relations and director of the Pennsylvania Center for the
Study of Labor Relations at Indiana University of Pennsylvania
(cmccollester@verizon.net).