PEC sent the following message to the Governor and Leadership in the General Assembly today:

After several years of work and debate, Pennsylvania stands close to passage of meaningful updates to the decades-old Oil & Gas Act.  On behalf of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC), we are writing to urge you to quickly reconcile and pass thesecritical protection provisions before the end of the year.

Because shale gas development has already established a tremendous footprint in our state, and it will only continue to grow, it isessential that these protections be enacted now – they should not be captive to further delays resulting from negotiation on an impact fee or local land use controls.

PEC and its partnering environmental organizations (Chesapeake Bay Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, and Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, who all served on the Governor’s Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission) have developed a summary annotation (available here) of what we believe is essential in the resulting reconciliation process – whether the framework of SB1100 or former HB1950 is the ultimate vehicle of choice.   This summary is in line with the recommendations of the Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission as well as the objective and inclusive work that PEC and our other partners have performed through consultation with agencies, industry, and communities.

With each passing day Pennsylvania continues to manage this widespread, industrial-scale activity pursuant to a severely outdated law.  It is time to act.