As a follow-up to last week’s town hall meeting, staff did more research on the Bedford County gas wells and discovered that most of the information we received from the people doing the talking at the town hall meeting was inaccurate. First of all, according to DEP, there have not been any Marcellus Shale wells drilled in Bedford County yet. The people at the meeting made it clear that the problems they were having were from Marcellus Shale drilling. Also, they complained about having to pay for copies of DEP reports that were done with information gathered in their homes. The way it was presented, I thought that DEP asked to enter their homes to get information for a report. What I found out was that the homeowners called DEP and requested that they come to their homes and test for certain things. These people are getting testing done for the price of a photocopy. Lastly, they wanted Pennsylvania to put a moratorium on drilling, like New York state did. This, they claimed, should be done because a report is soon to be completed on the dangers of this drilling and we should wait for this report. I was told that the report is either an EPA report or a DEP report. What we discovered was that New York was waiting for a report being done on their shale formations by their state’s department of environmental protection. Why would we in Pennsylvania wait for that? There are legitimate problems associated with Marcellus Shale drilling. Unfortunately, these statements didn’t move us any closer to addressing those problems.
-John
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