Inquirer Editorial: Impact fees a good start

Gov. Corbett's industry-heavy advisory panel has recommended that gas drillers pay impact fees to cover damage to roads and the environment.

But lawmakers in Harrisburg should go further than that and enact a plan that makes drillers at least also pay their rightful share toward keeping Pennsylvania green.

During the roughly two years that a gas-drilling tax has been in dispute, the state has lost more than $200 million in potential revenue, according to a liberal-leaning Harrisburg think tank.

Meanwhile, the austere budget Corbett just signed contains major cuts to education and other key programs.

Given that track record, even the tepid proposal for an unspecified impact fee represents progress. The strong industry influence on Corbett's panel - just four of its 30 members came from environmental groups - gives added heft to the recommendation.

Another positive sign: While the commission rejected any notion of scaling back drilling, it did endorse worthwhile environmental measures. In particular, the panel's suggestion of bigger buffers between wells and waterways would better protect drinking waters.

It also makes sense to boost fines for safety violations, as well as require state health officials to track any health impacts from drilling (even though they should be doing that already).

Of greater concern, though, may be the fine-print recommendations calling for streamlining the regulation of shale drilling. Among them: the suggestions that drilling schemes could trump local zoning rules, and that holdout property owners could be forced to lease gas rights.

This for an industry whose members have been cited hundreds of times for safety violations in just a few years' operation. It's not clear why an industry with that kind of record needs or deserves shortcuts to allow more drilling faster.

As the panel writes up its detailed recommendations, caution should be the watchword. Pennsylvania has already felt avoidable damage from a gold-rush approach to natural-gas exploration.

The same goes for the panel's suggestion that using natural gas should count toward meeting renewable or alternative-energy standards. Such a move could cripple greener energy sources.

(Similarly, the Delaware River Basin Commission shouldn't let Gov. Christie's aides in Trenton use funding threats to bully it into clearing drilling in this region.)

When Harrisburg lawmakers do get around to grappling with the impact fee in the fall, their best strategy would be a fee that keeps pace with gas development, rather than a fixed or even declining per-well charge. As for the revenue, the money should be shared as widely as possible to meet broad-based environmental needs and to combat a threat to drinking water that's anything but theoretical.

Indeed, the shale-tax and drill-regulation debate represents a potential watershed moment: when citizens' best interests in the natural-gas boom are the top concern.