No Bridge Over These Troubled Waters

Gov. Tom Corbett is chastising the Delaware River Basin Commission for holding up gas drilling in northeastern Pennsylvania. He's worked up about landowners' rights and stalled economic growth, for which he blames the DRBC's three-year moratorium on natural gas drilling. But Corbett has other reasons to worry. His recently adopted budget starves Keystone State parks and public forests of tax revenue, instead calling for more than a third of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources' $300 million allocation to come from oil and gas royalties and past lease payments.

That makes not just Corbett, but the entire commonwealth, uncomfortably beholden to the drilling companies and puts undue pressure on commonly held natural resources.

Someone should remind the governor that Pennsylvania's Constitution calls for the protection of its clean air and water. Gas companies are having diverse and, frequently, adverse impacts on both air and water as they extract natural gas from deep in the ground. So the four-state DRBC had good reason to impose the moratorium. The DRBC is in the process of creating rules to govern drilling activities with an eye to protecting both the Delaware and public health.

The Delaware River warrants protection not only for its "natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values" but as the source of drinking water for more than 15 million people, including Philadelphia and New York City residents.

Corbett's reliance on drilling to support natural resource protection is ironic - outright contradictory. He's made public lands dependent upon their own exploitation. The governor's championing of private property rights ignores the risks drilling poses to neighbors and people downstream, whose rights are equally important.

Corbett's actions aren't surprising. He is deeply, personally beholden to the drilling industry. As a candidate for state attorney general and then for governor, he accepted well over $1 million in contributions.

The DRBC is right to move cautiously on whether or how to allow gas drilling 

in the river basin. No amount of private or corporate economic gain is worth  

jeopardizing clean drinking water or Pennsylvania's natural heritage. 

Lake Wallenpaupack, popular with tourists, borders Pike and Wayne Counties. The lake's waters eventually find their way to the Delaware River.                                                                                                                 IMAGE: ANN PINCA

Shaking It Up

In a separate study on injection-induced earthquakes, seismologist William L. Ellsworth brings attention to the need for research concerning induced earthquakes. As Ellsworth concludes:  

The petroleum industry needs clear requirements for operation, regulators must have a solid scientific basis for those requirements, and the public needs assurance that the regulations are sufficient and are being followed. The current regulatory frameworks for wastewater disposal wells were designed to protect potable water sources from contamination and do not address seismic safety.    

 Editorial: We Can No Longer Sweep the Emerging Water 

 Crisis Under the Rug

                                                       Civil Society Institute and the  

                                                       American Clean Energy Agenda  

Due to our current approach to energy, America's energy sector is barreling toward a train wreck where excessive cost, water scarcity, accelerated climate change, and human health converge to create one huge economic and ecological mess.

Rather than pursuing an "all-of-the-above energy strategy," as embodied in the Clean Energy Standard, it's more like we're pursuing the "anything-but strategy" - anything but what makes financial, public health and climate sense. What does make sense is a replacement strategy, systematically deploying (and improving along the way) our least risky resources - energy efficiency, renewables, storage, distributed power and demand response technologies - while greatly reducing reliance on or getting rid of high-risk options - coal, nuclear, and natural gas. These low-risk options are reliable, and very importantly, they do not guzzle enormous amounts of our ever-dwindling water resources.

The unifying theme here is water. Access to enough clean water is emerging as a critical national security issue, both domestically and abroad. We are squandering our most precious resource. Current usage patterns are simply unsustainable, and the electric power sector is the biggest problem when it comes to water. Thermoelectric plants (coal, nuclear, combined-cycle natural gas) and agriculture are our biggest users. The difference is that we have to grow food, but we don't have to continue to rely exclusively on water-intensive, central-station electric generating power plants anymore.

The coming water availability crisis is why the Civil Society Institute (CSI) and its grassroots allies - The American Clean Energy Agenda (ACEA) - are proposing that President Obama take immediate, decisive action through his executive powers to make water policy the top priority of energy policy for the United States. Through executive order, Mr. Obama could accelerate the  

dialogue with respect to the nature of the looming water crisis and solutions to those problems, and begin the process of eliminating water-intensive coal, nuclear and natural gas power plants in what the USGS has identified as our most threatened watersheds. 

To that end, CSI and its allies have crafted and sent to the President for his consideration a draft executive order that establishes, among other things, technologically-based sustainability criteria for our electric grid and due diligence within the federal government of reaching them. It is also meant to jumpstart an informed public discussion of the water issues we're facing and the best ways to address them.

We can no longer sweep the emerging water crisis under the rug and pretend that business as usual can continue without severe economic and human consequences for Americans. This speculative exploitation and use of coal, nuclear, natural gas and oil resources will no longer work in a warming world with constrained water resources. We must begin to plan for a transition to a truly sustainable electric grid with an eye toward preserving our precious water resources.

Mr. President, the ball's in your court.  What are you going to do?