By The River

Yesterday I gave 25 environmental studies students from the State University of New York a tour of Centralia and its mine fire. During lunch afterward at May's Drive-In in Ashland, I was talking with the bus driver and he mentioned how he lives in the Skaneateles, N.Y., area, and recently allowed a gas drilling company--he didn't say which one-- to lease the right to drill on his property for gas in the Marcellus Shale formation.

What I found interesting and disturbing was his description of how the gas company approached him. Kind of a bad cop, good cop approach. The first guy sent out by the gas company was blunt and heavy-handed. According to the driver, he said the gas beneath his property didn't belong to him and they would get it one way or another, including by drilling sideways from the property of someone who did sign a lease, which technically can be done. He offered a low ball price, basically said take it or leave it, and then told him that he could sue, but the gas company would win in the end and he would get nothing.

"I almost threw him him (bodily) out of my house," the bus driver said.

Then the gas company sent a second representative, much nicer than the first, and offering a somewhat higher price. The bus driver, by now unnerved, signed with the second rep. I asked him if he had consulted a lawyer at any point during this process, and he said no, but now wished he had. I mentioned how the Republicans in the Pennsylvania General Assembly had stopped an extraction tax on the gas industry on the grounds that they didn't want to hurt a "struggling young industry" and that got a good laugh at the table.

Let's be straight. This is not a "struggling young industry." It is Halliburton, Chesapeake Energy, and the other big boys from Texas. Pennsylvania apparently has a whole lot of gas in the Marcellus formation, and this gas is the legacy of all state residents. We need to levy a serious extraction tax and devote that windfall to something like making college more affordable, if not free, for Pennsylvania children.

And the state needs to beef up regulation of the gas industry, not cut it as appears likely in the wake of the disastrous budget agreement signed recently. The state also needs to proactively educate land owners about their rights and how to get the best deal from drillers. There are lawyers developing this as a specialty, among them Bill Cluck of Harrisburg. Lawyers cost money, true, but they can save or make money in the long run.

We have ample evidence in Pennsylvania of the cost of unregulated energy extraction, the Centralia mine fire being a prime example. The mine fire was the result of a 1962 clean-up fire set by the borough in its landfill, which was in an abandoned strip mining pit with openings into the labyrinth of abandoned underground mines beneath Centralia. Had that pit been backfilled after the coal was extracted, as must be done with new strip mines now under a federal law passed during the Carter Administration in 1977, there would have been no Centralia mine fire and the town would still exist.

There is considerable concern among environmentalists and public officials about the threat to drinking water supplies posed by Marcellus gas drilling. New York City is desperately trying to stop any gas drilling in its pristine watershed, which provides some of the best, safest, tastiest drinking water in the world, and isn't filtered. New York is concerned that they will be forced to built filtration plants at huge cost to protect city residents in the event dangerous chemicals used in gas extraction get into ground water supplies.

We need to take action now in Pennsylvania so all residents benefit from the gas reserves and we don't have Centralia's younger brother 100 years from now.