The Lure of Powdermill: Nature Reserve vs. Gas Reserve
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
6 November 2010
By Sean D. Hamill,
Jane Netting Huff remembers well her father's search for the perfect
nature reserve.
"He walked all over Western Pennsylvania looking for places," said Dr.
Huff, 71, a Virginia Tech biology professor whose late father was
Graham Netting, the former director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural
History who sought to create a field station near Pittsburgh in 1948.
"He wanted a place where scientists from the Carnegie could do their
research, a place that would be protected."
He settled on a tract of land around a stream called Powdermill in
Westmoreland County that was owned by the Scaife and Mellon families,
longtime museum patrons.
In 1956, Dr. Netting convinced them to donate not only the original
1,100 acres, but money to buy additional land. It eventually became the
internationally known, 2,200-acre Powdermill Nature Reserve, now
revered for its exceptional quality stream, 49-year-old bird banding
program, and nearly unrivaled diversity of regional flora and fauna.
As proud as she is of her father's role in creating Powdermill, today
Dr. Huff, like many researchers who have worked at the site, is
worried. For about two years, like just about every large landowner in
Western Pennsylvania, the Carnegie has been contemplating whether it
should allow drilling of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale deposit a
mile below Powdermill's surface.
"I think that would be an unmitigated disaster," Dr. Huff said.
The Carnegie does not agree.
"The economic opportunity is something that certainly made everyone
wake up and take a look," said Sam Taylor, director of the Carnegie
Museum of Natural History. "So, our challenge has been to find out, is
there a way we could be part of this economic benefit and still
maintain the environment here?"
To be clear, Dr. Taylor said: "Nobody is contemplating drilling at
Powdermill."
Surface conservation easements on the property held since the 1980s by
the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy would prevent a drill rig from
being located on Powdermill's property.
But the conservancy has interpreted the easement's restrictions to mean
that even though the Carnegie can't drill on the property, drilling can
be done from a neighbor's land, going under the property, said
Stephanie Kraynick, conservancy spokeswoman.
To that end, about two years ago the Carnegie joined an alliance of
about 140 landowners who together own about 13,000 acres in the
Ligonier Valley.
Such property owner alliances are not uncommon; there are dozens of
them within the Marcellus Shale basin that stretches from southern New
York, through Pennsylvania and into West Virginia. While the Ligonier
Valley group, like other alliances, hopes its unity can give it a
better price once drilling occurs, its primary goal is to get some
assurance that drilling will have the least possible impact on the
environment.
"We thought if we could act together, controlling a large block of
land, that we could use that amount of acreage to better defend the
land for the community at large," said Gordon Nelson, a spokesman for
the Ligonier Valley Landowners Group. "We could have a unified front
and instead of receiving terms [from the gas companies], we could
dictate them."
What the group would like to dictate are the terms of a lease that
would allow it to have a role in such issues as where the wells and
roads needed for drilling are placed, how the companies monitor well
sites, and even how they respond to an accident, Dr. Taylor said.
The landowners -- many of them wealthy families from the Pittsburgh
area for whom these are second homes -- are relying on the Carnegie to
figure out what would be the "best practices" in the industry that
their lease could include.
"We're looking to them to help us with the science," said Mr. Nelson,
whose family lives year-round on 234 acres of land that abuts
Powdermill, and co-owns 740 more acres in the area.
Dr. Taylor said the Carnegie has been working with various groups,
including the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, to try to figure out
what kind of conditions it could include that would make drilling near
Powdermill environmentally safe.
But can drilling for Marcellus Shale natural gas ever be done safely so
it doesn't degrade its nearly pure, namesake stream?
Eight of Powdermill's official research associates, professors and
officials at universities and organizations across the country and
abroad who have done research or have taught at Powdermill said,
generally, they weren't sure. But all of them cautioned that the
Carnegie should proceed carefully, if at all.
"I would say that at best there's uncertainty about the effect
[Marcellus shale drilling] would have," said Stephen Tonsor, a
Powdermill research associate who is an associate professor at the
University of Pittsburgh. "We have to be careful we're not impacting
the long-term well-being for short-term gain."
Cynthia Walter, a research associate who is an associate professor of
biology at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, said she wants officials at
the Carnegie to remember what they have before making their decision.
She said because Powdermill is so untouched, it is a reference point
for researchers trying to figure out what other degraded streams in the
region should be like, and that it can be used to draw on to restore
organisms missing from other ecosystems.
"If we were to lose Powdermill as a reference point, or as a source for
recolonizing other streams, that would be an incalculable loss," Dr.
Walter said.
Though she believes drilling technology is improving -- she was at a
conference recently where a company said it had discovered a method to
drill for natural gas without using fracking water -- right now it is
still too risky, given the consequences at Powdermill.
"There's just so many negatives and so few positives, why do this?" she
asked. It's a question even environmental organizations are struggling
with.
"It's complicated," said Davitt Woodwell, the environmental council's
southwest region's senior vice president, who has been working with the
Carnegie. "There are best practices for Marcellus Shale drilling and
they're evolving over time."
The difficult question then, Dr. Taylor said, is this: "Is there a gas
company out there willing to play by our rules?"
So far the answer has been no. As many as five or six gas companies
expressed interest in the group's land, but in the end only one ever
made an offer.
Last spring, The Williams Companies out of Tulsa, Okla., offered the
group $2,500 an acre plus 15 percent royalties on the sale of any gas.
But when the landowners group said it thought that was low, the company
"walked away from the table," Dr. Taylor said.
The company then tried to negotiate with individual landowners, but
none of them took a deal "which was a good sign" of unity, Dr. Taylor
said.
In a statement, The Williams Companies would only say that it "was glad
to talk with the landowners coalition," and that it "continues to look
at the many opportunities in Pennsylvania."
The landowners group thought that including Powdermill's land in the
deal would be a lure, perhaps allowing one of the natural gas companies
that proclaims in its ads how environmentally concerned it is, to be
able to drill on the land and then use Powdermill as an example of how
green-thinking they really were.
"We thought this would be a golden opportunity for a company to put
their actions where their PR was," Dr. Taylor said. "So far, it turns
out that was naïve thinking."
Mr. Nelson said a different gas company, after it was told what kind of
conditions the landowners group wanted to impose, told him "there's
just easier folks to deal with who aren't as concerned about the
environment as you."
Of course, not everyone thinks the environment is the controlling
concern for the Carnegie any more than it is for other landowners in
deciding to allow drilling.
"I understand they were enticed by the money and surely any nature
reserve can use the money," said Betty Ferster, an associate professor
of biology at Shippensburg University who does bee research at
Powdermill. "But I bet you the people who made that decision are not
biologists, they're administrators."
Dr. Taylor was familiar with that argument.
"I had to laugh at one letter I got that said: 'I suspect you're only
doing it for the money,' " Dr. Taylor said. "As an officer of the
organization my responsibility is to make sure we have the money to
fulfill our mission. Of course economics are a consideration in
everything we do.
"But right now it's all abstract without a proposal."
To many of the critics of the Carnegie's decision to even contemplate
allowing drilling, they hope it stays that way for Powdermill in
particular.
"That's a hopeful sign," Dr. Huff of the fact that the gas companies
don't seem to be happy with the alliance and Powdermill's conditions.
She said her father "would have been shocked that anybody would propose
[to drill] on the property, but he would have looked for better ways to
do it on other properties.
"He loved Powdermill, There was no place he'd rather be," his daughter
said.
Sean D. Hamill: shamill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2579.