From a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, notable quotes from this week’s Marcellus Shale Policy Conference at Duquesne University:

PA Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger: “We’ve made mistakes before. We have to get this right or the costs will overwhelm the benefits. …What is needed is the right rules and the right staff with the independence to enforce those rules… there’s no such thing as “zero impact drilling…The bonding regulations are pitiful — $2,500 a well or $25,000 for all the wells a company drills in the state. Well the joke will be on us when the first company leaves Pennsylvania. Right now, clearly the rational economic decision would be forfeit the bond and walk away.”

Kent Moors, director of the Energy Policy Research Group at Duquesne’s Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy, said the state’s failure to make good Marcellus shale drilling policy decisions will result in the costs being borne by local municipalities, including infrastructure impacts, especially destruction of roads, price inflation and impacts on agricultural land and water.

“Water prices will increase and drilling may cause industrial facilities to close. It’s a rising tide that won’t raise all boats,” Dr. Moors said in his keynote address. “It must be met head on, transparently and collaboratively. It can’t be rammed down the throats of the locals.”

Please read entire article here:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10124/1055350-113.stm

Tragically,  New York’s regulations don’t do anything to address those issues either.

Then, too, why would anyone in their right mind voluntarily do business with an industry that will behave as badly as poor regulations & enforcement will allow?

Would you rent a room in your house to a parolee?

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Tags: Cost Externalization, Hanger, industrialization, Pennsylvania