DN Editorial: Halting gas drilling frenzy

GOV. RENDELL yesterday signed a moratorium prohibiting further gas drilling in state forest lands.

Not surprisingly, his announcement was met by applause from many environmental groups who turned out at Penn Treaty Park.

Rendell deserves credit for halting the frenzied drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale deposit on state land (the moratorium doesn't cover drilling on private land), especially since the Senate has failed, as promised, to impose an extraction tax on gas drilling.

But that moratorium is like closing the barn door after the horses have escaped, carrying many of our valuables away with them: The fact is, 700,000 acres of state forest land is already leased for drilling. That represents more than a third of the entire 2.2 million acres in the state.

So much for an industry in its "infancy" that Republicans in the Senate have wanted to protect by failing to impose a gas-extraction tax.

The problem is that the lease payments and royalties the state gets on each well are lucrative, so that in the absence of a tax, the state has coped with budget challenges by issuing more leases.

To drill for gas, a mix of water, chemicals and sand is shot deep into the earth. The process uses vast amounts of water, which must be hauled away and stored. The process risks large-scale water contamination and has already caused drinking-water problems for some state residents. New York City recently put a halt on drilling, after an environmental study.

Our own Department of Conservation and Natural Resources has studied the impact, too. Too bad we didn't wait for the results before a third of the state forest lands were leased for drilling. The state's gas reserves are not a bad thing; with the proper management that balances environmental, public and private interests, the gas can solve many energy problems. Right now, that balance is way out of whack. *