| Lawmakers again try to regulate gas drilling
A renewed push to drill for natural gas is pushing West Virginia lawmakers to consider new safeguards for property owners and the environment.
By Lawrence Messina
The Associated Press
www.wvgazette.com
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - A renewed push to drill for natural gas is pushing West Virginia lawmakers to consider new safeguards for property owners and the environment.
Bills introduced in the Senate and House this week would require that owners be notified before drilling companies with mineral rights apply for permits to build structures such as wells or pipelines on their land.
"The surface owners really have no leverage in law right now to object to or even negotiate the placement or wells, access roads and pipelines on their property,'' said Gary Zuckett, a lobbyist for West Virginia Citizen Action Group. "Now, they're not required to be notified until the permit has been applied for and the surveying has already been done.''
The industry successfully opposed similar measures proposed during the previous two sessions. Industry lobbyists say current protections are sufficient, and the new proposals would handicap business.
"This frustrates the ability of the industry in an already heavily regulated environment,'' said Phil Reale, a lobbyist for the state's Independent Oil and Gas Association. "Much of what is proposed would change an entire body of real estate law that's existed in the state for 150 years and has worked.''
David McMahon, a lobbyist for surface owners, said the pending bills address cases in which companies have drilled where the owners had planned to build something else -- for instance, a retirement home. He said the provisions are similar to New Mexico's laws on the issue.
The Senate, meanwhile, on Wednesday delayed for the second time a vote on a measure addressing the wastewater that results from drilling into underground shale for natural gas.
Much of it comes from hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking.'' Millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are blasted into a well to fracture tightly compacted rock and release trapped natural gas. The water that returns to the surface can be five times saltier than seawater and laden with dissolved solids.
Fracking has been applied to tap the massive Marcellus Shale, potentially the country's most productive natural gas source. It stretches deep underground beneath several northeastern and Appalachian states, including nearly all of West Virginia.
The original rule would have required liners on all pits and impoundments for holding wastewater, similar to the liners used for landfills. Environmentalists have cried foul over changes to that measure.
It would now allow some drillers to avoid that requirement by conducting a soil analysis, according to Don Garvin, legislative coordinator for the West Virginia Environmental Council. If the analysis shows that liquid cannot easily flow through the soil, the company wouldn't need to pay for a liner.
"We went through all this years ago with requiring landfills to have liners and the decision was made to not take any chance,'' Garvin said. "The bottom line is, we want to see all pits and impoundments have liners.''
Reale said the rule language reflects an agreement between industry groups and state regulators. A spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Among other provisions, the proposed rule would require companies to plant markers above underground pipelines in mining areas. A surface miner was killed in 2006 when his bulldozer struck an unmarked line in Boone County.
The industry enjoyed a brief expansion in drilling before the recession took hold and natural gas prices dropped. Reale said that decline persists, and said 2009 saw 60 percent fewer wells drilled when compared to the previous year.
But Zuckett and McMahon believe the market is headed for an upswing and they question whether DEP is prepared. Regulators had told lawmakers on Tuesday that the department has 17 inspectors for 57,000 active wells. Each inspector would have to check more than a dozen a day to ensure that each well gets a single visit annually.
"That's why we feel this is the right time to enact these modest protections for surface owners, before the boom really takes off,'' Zuckett said.
By Lawrence Messina
The Associated Press
AP writer Tom Breen contributed to this report.
www.wvgazette.com
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