We’ve got a lot of questions

I was at the Genetti Hotel in Williamsport on Wednesday, November 18th for the public hearing held by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regarding Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) of pollutants entering the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.  www.epa.gov/chesapeakebaytmdl

Written questions from the audience were invited during the final portion of the two-hour presentation. Lycoming County Commissioner Jeff Wheeland, moderator of the meeting, prefaced a question regarding salts and chemicals entering the waterways as a result of the gas well industry with this comment, “We’ve got a lot of questions on this topic, and many of them are similar.”  

No surprise. Many of us attended the meeting for the sole purpose of voicing our concerns over the environmental threat to the watershed’s ecosystem posed by the gas well industry.  

Bob Koroncai, Chesapeake Bay TMDL manager, offered a brief and shocking reply to the question concerning the gas drilling industry’s environmental impact on water quality. “We don’t know about that”, Koroncai claimed.  

If EPA’s TDML manager doesn’t know, who does?

How can these tax-dollar funded EPA meetings refuse to address this threat? Will our state government continue to issue gas drilling permits while failing to pass new air, water, forest, wildlife, wetland and ecosystem protections needed to preserve PA’s environment, citizens and natural heritage?

How can the PA Department of Environmental Protection do an adequate job of regulating the gas industry after a 27% DEP budget cut that came at the very time the agency’s work load has significantly increased?

Will this purported gas industry boost to PA’s economy break the financial backs of future generations, as they must clean up the toxic challenges that remain?

Why can’t our elected officials look to the current gas well problems in Texas and Colorado and learn from their mistakes?

Why are there no good answers to these and many more valid questions about drilling in the Marcellus shale?

Barbara Jarmoska
Montoursville, PA