This is the non-leadership you can expect from Charleston

I am told here is a part of the proposed Marcellus legislation being bandied about in Charleston to "protect" us: What a joke! Actually it is a hard insult slap across the face of every citizen in the state who believes that anyone in Charleston is looking out to protect water and health and safety and property. If you are a gas company then Charleston is on your team (the best money can buy).
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"All local ordinances and enactments purporting to regulate gas operations regulated by this act are hereby preempted and superseded to the extent the ordinances and enactments regulate the method of gas operations."

By and large, this is the same group of people who raised the limits of allowable mercury dumping into our streams because studies revealed that West Virginians don't eat a lot of fish.

I love the recall idea...

Another unwelcome section of the 73-page draft law (section 22-6A-14 (c) (4) deals with "presumption of liability". It would allow someone with a water to sue in civil courts for "contamination or deprivation of a fresh water source or supply within one thousand feet of the site of drilling for a horizontal well." Under this rule, the court would 'presumes' the drilling operation to be liable for such contamination unless proven otherwise.  

However (there’s always the fine print) the draft includes all sorts of escape routes for industry, including if "the pollution occurred more than six months after completion of drilling or alteration activities."

Background information:  Laboratory tests of 150 wells in Pennsylvania have shown that many of those located near deep gas wells have already been contaminated by methane whose chemical 'signature' proves that it comes from deep deposits.  No such contamination was found in water wells that are not near deep gas wells.

Contamination can happen any time after the deep gas well is drilled.  It can take years for methane to seep into shallow sources of drinking water.  And it can take years to migrate to more distant water wells.  By trying to limit the industry’s liability to six months would give the industry yet another 'get out of jail free' card.

A far more just and reasonable 'presumption of liability' would be the following:  if there's deep hydrocarbon contamination of a water well, it's caused by the nearest deep gas well.  Period.  Simple. No time limit.  Such contamination doesn’t happen naturally.  It should be up to the gas company to prove that their well was not the cause of the problem, not up to water user to prove the opposite.

This can be illustrated by a down-home example:  Let's say my Uncle Ferg passes away and I'm too cheap to pay for a funeral. It’s early October and you’re not using your farm well, so I dump Uncle Ferg down your well. Out of sight, out of mind.

Six months and one day later, in early April, you discover my rotten relative when you turn on the tap to water your garden and livestock.

It's obvious that the body is my Uncle Ferg and that there’s no way he could get into your well without my help.

According to the draft legislation cited above, because it took six months for the problem to show up you’ll need to spend a fortune on investigators, lab tests, lawyers, etc., in order to prove who’s down your well and how he got there. Otherwise I don’t owe you a cent.

Shouldn't the evidence -- the Uncle Ferg’s 'fingerprint' -- be enough for the civil courts to 'presume' that whoever was responsible for giving him a nice burial dumped him down your well instead?

The gas industry, like the tobacco industry before it, has unlimited resources to fight any liability suit with the enthusiasm of a rabid wolverine. It is likely that they will never be held responsible for the contamination they cause until, as with the tobacco industry, folks are dropping like flies. Even then, it will be the government, not the victims, that ends up collecting the fine.

This is an excellent lesson in how industry lobbyists write the rules meant to regulate the industry itself. There seems to be nobody representing the public interest who is reviewing these laws in the detail necessary to discover the little pro-industry gems hidden deep under a pile of words...  --  Rich

Given the global economic climate, I would assume a more balanced approach may be in everyone's best interest.
Joe, if you oppose coal so much turn your power off 52% of the time. Following that line of thought maybe there would be 52% less law suits filed.

Jim I never said don't mine coal. I come from generations of coal miners. I just want extraction to be done with adequate protections for our other resources like water, air and land. I also want the coal companies to compensate the state for ruining roads streams and flood control. Most importantly, I want legislators to represent the people not just campaign contributors.

Gentlemen, may I suggest again that the notion that the dividing line is simply between "clean environment and economic prosperity" unduly limits the equation and limits the the question. Here is how I see it. Since 1950 the world population has doubled and accordingly the demands on resources have doubled or even tripled due to the thirst of consumption and the speed of production. Of course, what we forget in our short term vision is that resources are finite and do not increase with demand but decrease actually. Back in the 50/s education was largely about learning and developing a body of knowledge to help you view the world and your life in it; now education is about job training and business skills. President Eisenhower said that we could not have both guns and butter but we didn't listen and bought both on Wall Street slight of hand, credit cards and, worst of all, a national debt that goes to Jupiter. We are in a society riddled with drugs and employ an extravagant number of citizens "fighting" this problem while we pay folks on assistance but don't even ask them not to use drugs. Our level of job reliance (showing up for work on time etc) is low, our work ethic is low, our psychology is aim at goals which are not further away than a minute or two. And because of the explosion of technology, we have been mesmerized into believing that "cyberspace" is where we live not earth. We are inextricably bound to the natural world but view it as separate from us and deny our absolute dependance on it. So the long and short of what I'm saying is simply there is one of a heck more to this than thinking gas wells are going to solve the economic day for us. The mess we are in is immense and begging the question between two alternatives allows the foot of big gas money to tilt the outcome.

The idea that we must make a choice between a clean environment or economic growth is false. Regulation creates jobs, it does not destroy them. Regulation creates jobs, it does not destroy them. For example, the Japanese car industry won the world market because their regulations were so restrictive. Likewise with the US drug industry. The same was once true of US food exports. The Netherlands passed regulations requiring the use of 'green' energy and now their multi-billion-dollar wind industry dominates the world market.

Polluting the environment is bad economics. Protecting the environment is good for the economy. In West Virginia alone, Federal coal mining regulations have created thousands of jobs in this state reclaiming mined lands.

The problem with shale gas is that groundwater contamination must be stopped before it happens. Once the groundwater is poisoned it is hopelessly expensive to clean up. -- Rich