I'm opposed to drilling for natural gas
in the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania using hydraulic fracturing
(fracking) for two main reasons. Briefly:
- Fracking poses long-term dangers to the public health and safety by releasing carcinogens and other toxins into the air and water on which we all depend. It may also threaten the geological stability of the land.
- Further drilling for natural gas will further delay the transition to renewable energy—primarily, wind and solar power—that is essential to avoid dangerous climate change that threatens to end human life on earth in just a few decades.
I'll discuss both of those issues in
more detail on another day. This post is just about HB1950. I'll
assume there will be more drilling and ask whether we are taxing and
regulating it effectively. To say that the bill is industry-friendly
is an understatement. But that should be no surprise, since the
government of Pennsylvania is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the
natural gas industry.
Flaring at a natural gas well in Potter County. © Joshua B. Pribanic
Impact Fee
First of all, there is the optional
impact fee. Each county must decide whether to impose it, which
means that gas industry lobbyists will be flocking to the major
drilling counties, checkbooks in hand, hoping to play off one county
against another. (“If you impose the impact fee and the adjacent
county doesn't, we'll leave your natural gas in the ground. And if
you believe that . . .”)
The amount of the impact fee is
difficult to pin down because it varies with the price of natural
gas, but at current natural gas prices, it amounts to an effective
tax rate of 2.6%—as opposed to, say, the marginal income tax rate
of 28% that most upper middle class Americans pay. This amounts to
about $240,000 per well, as compared to $993,700 per well in West
Virginia, $878,500 in Texas, and $555,700 in Arkansas.
Sixty percent of the impact fee goes
back to the counties to cover local costs, such as police and fire
protection, damage to roadways, etc. The remaining 40% is split
among state agencies, including some environmental and recreation
funds, such as the Growing Greener fund. However, these gains are
offset by cuts to environmental and recreation spending in the
governor's 2012-2013 budget.
These fees will not even begin to cover
the legacy costs of drilling in Pennsylvania. Ultimately, the gas
companies will treat Pennsylvania the same way they treat the Third
World. They will extract our resources and leave us with a hollowed
out shell of environmental destruction. The cleanup costs will be
borne by the taxpayers. As the song goes, “find 'em, fool 'em, and forget 'em.” (I think that's how it goes; there may be another
“F-word” in there somewhere.)
Health and Safety Standards
The media have dutifully reported the
health and safety protections in the bill, such as increased bonding
requirements, greater penalties for violations, and setback
requirements from homes and waterways. However, the bonds and fines
are still inadequate, and the setbacks are a sham, since the bill
requires the state to grant a variance from these standards should
they deprive a company of its gas rights or if they promise to take
protective measures. (For a more thorough critique of the bill's
details, see this document from Penn Future.)
There have been over 3000 legal
violations by natural gas companies in the last four years. The
Environmental Protection Agency's recent decisions to investigate the
effects of natural gas drilling in Susquehanna and Washington counties was widely interpreted as a lack of confidence in Pennsylvania's
Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to enforce the law,
which seems reasonable if DEP is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the natural gas
industry.
Preemption
Another provision of HB1950 preempts any local ordinances that regulate natural gas drilling that are
stricter than the state standards—which is most of them. It states: “(A)ll local ordinances purporting to regulate oil and gas
operations regulated by Chapter 32 are hereby superceded.” Local
governments have 120 days to repeal those laws or they lose any
impact fees that might be coming to them, plus they will have to pay
legal penalties if they are sued by drilling companies.
Preemption
is a legal strategy by which corporations and government take away
the right to home rule from a community. It can occur with any law,
but it often involves environmental issues such as corporate
resource extraction or waste dumping. State preemption goes
something like this: A bill is passed by the state imposing lax,
corporate-friendly standards on the activity in question. Included
in the bill is a section making it illegal for county or local
governments to impose more stringent standards than those contained
in the state law. The bill is often given an Orwellian title
claiming to “protect” the very right that is being taken away.
Remember when the legislature passed
its partial ban on smoking in restaurants and bars? Establishments
that claim to make 20% or less of their revenue from the sale of food
were exempt from the ban. Suppose Allegheny County wanted to ban
smoking in all businesses that serve food? Sorry. That's preempted.
Another example of preemption in Pennsylvania is the 2005 ACRE act,
in which the state overruled local ordinances governing farming
practices in Pennsylvania.
Of course, should a state impose
environmental standards that corporations find to be a nuisance, such
as California's gas mileage standards, they will press for federal
preemption of state laws. Congress can preempt state and local laws
under the supremacy clause of Article VI of the Constitution.
Between 2000 and 2005, the feds enacted 27 preemptive laws
overturning 92 state statutes. The trend appears to be growing.
The ultimate in preemption is the World
Trade Organization, where a three-person international committee
of corporate lawyers have the power to overrule the laws of any
country that they deem to be in “restraint of trade.” These dispute resolution tribunals have consistently ruled health, safety and environmental standards to be illegal under the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade.
Preemption shifts the decision-making
power away from members of the local community who are directly
affected by the outcome and gives it to people who don't have to live
with the results. The legislators who decide that local communities
can't regulate factory hog farms don't have to smell the pig shit.
In most cases, it shifts the decision to a level of government
where corporations have greater influence, or where they can
exert their influence more economically—that is, where fewer people
have to be “persuaded” through a combination of lobbying and
campaign contributions.
Brian O'Neill of the Post-Gazette
said, “We need to elect better poker players to represent is in
Harrisburg.” This is typical media talk. It assumes that when our
legislators fail to act in the public interest, it is due to
incompetence. A more likely explanation is that the public interest
is not even a serious issue for our politicians. Their only
important constituency is the people who pay for their campaigns.
According to Penn Future, Governor Tom Corbett received $1.3 million in
contributions from the natural gas industry.
The
responsibility for this debacle belongs to the Elephant Party. The
Jackasses were excluded from the secret deliberations between the
governor, the majority leadership and natural gas industry which
produced this bill. But there is no reason to think the result would
have been different had there been divided government, or had the
Jackasses been in power. (Recall the Rendell administration's
similar record on natural gas.) The public interest can be safely
ignored because there is no political party in Pennsylvania that
represents the public. Democracy has been preempted.
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