'Gas Rush' Prompts DEP Shuffle to Create One-Stop Shop
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
20 September 2011
By Brad Bumsted and Timothy Puko
HARRISBURG — A reorganization at the state Department of
Environmental Protection will streamline operations and impel
consistent regulation of the burgeoning Marcellus shale gas
industry, the agency secretary said on Monday.
"It's this simple," said Michael Krancer, who heads the
2,600-person state agency. "When we take four different ways of
doing things and make it into one, everybody wins. Environmental
protection wins. The predictability wins.
The oversight part of it wins. The enforcement is better. The
implementation side in the field is better."
Krancer told the Tribune-Review that he plans to meet today with
agency employees and environmental groups affected by agency
decisions to explain the reorganization.
Natural gas drilling and the cleanup of brownfield sites are two
of the key agency functions highlighted in the changes, Krancer
said. The changes won't require adding or furloughing staffers, he
said.
"When I got here in (January), I inherited a bit of a balkanized
operation on Marcellus shale and unconventional gas regulation. I
had three regions and a central Harrisburg office. Sometimes they
were doing it three different ways. We want it to be done one
way."
The Bureau of Oil and Gas Management, which oversees gas drilling,
will become a stand-alone department headed by a deputy secretary.
A bureau of Environmental Cleanup and Brownfields will be created
with an emphasis on developing brownfields, Krancer said. The
office will be a "one-stop shop" for improving abandoned
industrial sites for development, he said.
Environmental cleanup offices now are in regions, said DEP
spokeswoman Katy Gresh.
The staff of oil and gas regulators has grown so much during the
gas rush that the new bureau will likely be one of the biggest in
the department, said David E. Hess, the department head under
former Gov. Tom Ridge. Hess was on Gov. Tom Corbett's transition
team, which heard a lot about how those regulators were having
problems communicating.
"There was no doubt the oil and gas program was pretty messed up,"
Hess said. "It wasn't talking to other programs, and you didn't
get a ... complete picture ... of regulating all the things
related to the Marcellus shale.
Anything they do to coordinate within the department and give more
emphasis to the oil and gas program would be a very good thing."
If it's modeled on the Bureau of Mining and Reclamation, the oil
and gas department would allow drillers to get their permits all
in one place, Hess added. Drillers usually need several permits
covering things such as erosion controls and water usage, and — in
a consolidated department — experts on those issues will be able
to focus on drilling operations in the larger context.
As a result of the changes, "the environment is going to get
consistent and uniform application of the rules," Krancer told the
Trib. "They are going to be playing with the same rulebook. I
think enforcement, which always has been important to me, will be
more prominent in what we do.
"We've always said cheaters need to be called out and treated like
cheaters. ... The industry wants cheaters called out and dealt
with," Krancer said.
Industry leaders have complained for decades about a lack of
consistency, and administrations tried to resolve those
complaints, said Jan Jarrett, president and CEO of the
environmental group Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future. New hires
and staff reorganizations are common responses, but the complaints
have not stopped.
"If they are committed to tight permitting and robust enforcement
of those environmental laws, that's what's important," she said.
"Sometimes there'll be disagreements (in the Bureau of Mining and
Reclamation), and the coal operators will get permits over
objections from water quality guys who see things happening on the
ground. Those are pitfalls they'll have to avoid."
"Secretary Krancer's decision to reorganize, streamline and
modernize the DEP is a prudent step toward ensuring the agency can
continue protecting the health and safety of all Pennsylvanians,"
Kathryn Klaber, president and executive director of the
Cecil-based Marcellus Shale Coalition, said in a statement
e-mailed by a spokesman.
Successful oversight will be determined primarily by the strength
of the state's regulations, not its staff structure, former
Secretary John Hanger, Krancer's predecessor, wrote on his blog
yesterday afternoon. One challenge it may face is in providing
local and regional responses because gas drilling sites are not as
geographically concentrated as mines, he wrote.
"The move itself will likely have some beneficial and negative
effects, but at the margins," Hanger said.