Brian O’Neill’s Jan. 15 column in the Post-Gazette (“Put Methane in Its Place, not the Atmosphere”) was missing a crucial fact: Pennsylvania’s air is getting cleaner because of increased natural gas production.
Patrick McDonnell, the acting state secretary of environmental protection, put it plainly in a 2016 news release, when he said, “Overall, our air quality continues to improve.” The release included figures showing that, from 2012 to 2014, the number of drilling sites monitored by DEP increased by more than 11.7 percent, while the total methane emissions from those sites decreased by more than 11.6 percent. Tighter monitoring found a decrease in methane leaks.
I introduced the Keeping Pennsylvania Competitive Act, Senate Bill 1327, last year in response to Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to introduce new methane regulations in the permitting process for new wells. The regulations won’t decrease methane leaks — existing regulations already have done that. What the new regulations will do is lengthen already burdensome delays in permit approvals and cost the state thousands of family-sustaining jobs while providing no additional environmental benefit.
The current system of monitoring and regulating methane emissions includes four recent actions by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and it clearly is working.
While further state-level regulations might appease special interests and ideological allies of Mr. Wolf, they would make no meaningful impact on the environment and would only serve to punish working families already dealing with a market downturn in natural gas.
Consider a Pennsylvania Department of Health study that shows that asthma-related hospitalization rates across Pennsylvania decreased 26 percent between 2009 and 2013, the very time in which Pennsylvania’s shale boom was at its peak. That same study found that Washington County, in the epicenter of the drilling activity, had asthma hospitalization rates below the state average.
Another study, commissioned by the Fort Cherry School District in Washington County, concluded that drilling operations near the school “did not substantially affect local air” quality.
Pennsylvania’s air quality is improving because of natural gas production, not in spite of it. Mr. Wolf’s proposed regulations would make it harder to achieve the very goal we have reached: cleaner air. The plain fact is that natural gas producers already have the strongest possible incentive to avoid methane leaks, because methane is the very product they sell.
The increased use of natural gas in Pennsylvania and throughout the United States is making our local communities’ air cleaner, establishing America as a world leader in global carbon-emission reduction and creating jobs in our region in ways we haven’t seen in a generation. That is why the Legislature must pass the Keeping Pennsylvania Competitive Act.
State Sen. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Jefferson Hills, represents parts of western Allegheny County and eastern Washington County.
First Published: February 1, 2017, 5:00 a.m.
