NWPOA Letter To Carol Collier

I
Cnrol Collier, Executi>-e Director

Delaware Ri\"er Basin Commissjon
25 State Police Drive
Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance LLC
PO BOX 157
Damascus, PA 18415
570-224-6982
P.O. Box 736o West Trenton, NJ 08628-036o
June 27, 2013
Dear Ms. Collier:
T b ~ years have passed since the Delnwnre River Basin Commissions executive
director, Carol Collier, imposed a moratorium on drilling for natural gas in the
!>Min, pending adoption of regulations to go\"ern that activity. And now 19
months have passed since the Commission proposed regulations, held hearings
on them and then failed to bring them to a YOte. We're at a loss to understand why
this is going on or to aocept the temporizing the Commission staff bas offered
instead of subo,1Anti\'e explanations.
This situation is particularly frustrnting to the Northern Wayne Property Owners
Alliance aad its more than i,300 family members. We founded the Alliance to be
an ad\'ocat e for the region's landowners with oil and gas producers. Aided by
highly qu,.lified attorneys who specialized in environmental and Pennsylvania
luw and who knew the oil and gas industry, the Alliance spent two and n half
years. nn i mmense antount of volw_ttecr time and nearly three quarters of a
million dollars to procure a precedent-setting lease that is among the most
community- and environmentally (riendly leases in existence. Tho.5e leases"""'
then executed with two of the m06t reliable exploration com ponies in the country.
nie Alliance exercised great prudence in the formulation of its lease and is now in
jeopardy of losing that lease, the environmental prottdions it provides for the
community and those highly competent and respected companies, the Hess
Corpomtion and the Newfield Exploration Company. Our lessors, if terminated,
and our region could be targeted by wildcat companies with boiler-plate leases
and shoddy operations. The unending delays ha\'C gone well beyond merely
testing our patience.
In all this time, the commission could hnve at lea>1: stepped aside and limited its
aetivities to its already established functions, which focus on water qunntity and
water quality data collection and analysis and could help assure the long-term
balance between healthy ecosystems and economic vitality, as the Wayne County
Commissioners ha"e suggested in a recent letter of their own to you. The
Comml<sion could have aDo..-ed i1S individua.1 member states lo regulate giis
exploration and drilling ";thin their respective borders. This approach would be
more than satisfactory to us since Pennsylwnia has both strong regulations and
an enforcement regime already in plnoo and operating successfully.
The Commission's failure to adopt natural ga.s regulations or step aside has not
only harmed many people financially, it actually threatens the land itself. Several
of our members with extensive acreage say they could be forced to heavily timber
their lands or subdivide them and open the subdivisions to developmeot so they
and their fomilies can keep going financially. ll is hard to predict what
community and environmental problems new re;idcntiaJ and commercial
de>'elopment could bring.
It cannol be said we ha,,.,nt Cried to resoh'e this conflict duriog; the Inst three
years. In early February of 2012 - February 2nd, to be precise - Ollr lawyer wrote
to the Executive Director expressing our concerns, outlining our legal pesition,
nnd requesting action. Ms. Collier's reply or March 13"' that year was little better
than no response at all, a recitation about the complex science and policy
questions involved - the same old refrains ,.. ... d been bcarins since the summer
of2010.
Before and after that exchanse of letters, the Alliance and ind.ividual members
met with DJUJC representatives and with one or the Commissioners, wrote letters
and e-mails to the Commissioners and Ms. Collier, wrote and called our elected
officials, and attempted to bring pressure on the Commission and its executive
director through the media - all to no &\-ail. Tbe Commission's inaction has
natural gas exploration in the basin to a complete halt to the detriment
or the local economy and the citizens who in good faith leased thei r land for gas
exploration and development.
In our opinion, the Commission is allowins itself to be held hostage by the
media and an anti-drilling community made up m-iy of people
from outside our region aDd by actMst staffers within the DRBC who are
exercising their personal biases. "Water quality" is not n genuine issue, as
Newfield and Hess h"'"' testified repeatedly. Many drilling companies already
operat e s"""'5Sfully in settings with "ltigb Qua.lily" and "Exceptional Value"
waters elsewbere i!l the Commonwi:alth. Our aeigbbors to the west in
Susquehanna, Bradford and Tioga Count:iea - all in the Susquehanna Rh'er
83sin - are seeing an economic boom that is wonderful to behold, but we're ltcpt
from sharing in that bounty.
We recentily learned that Susquehanna County and municipalities within the
county will soon receive in excess of $8 million in Marcellus drilling impact recs.
In these financially troubled times, funds of this sort are sorely needed by Wayne
County's public sector especially ,..;th service wor\:tts' pensions hitting local
community budgets bani. Ch..,r time, the struggle just becomes more difficult to
pay our ever-rising taxes, to support the salaries and pensions of our teachers and
public workers ond lo secure for the next generation and the community at Jorge
the farms nnd forested proJ)<!rties that in many cases have been in the same
fumilies for generations.Whichever way ..... go, ho,.......,, whether with or without
gas productjon in our ""' cannm begin to ""'k toword our private and
community pis without a blueprint for the future, and that entails a decision
from the Defaware River Basin Commission.
The Commission's inaction has left the Alliance and a huge share of its indi\wual
members - along "ith many other Wayne County landowners, property groups
and businesses - to conclude that if the Commission, at its July 9- o'" meeting.
fails to at least schedule a ''Ole before year's end on the proposed regulations or,
olternati\'ely, fails lo step aside and abandon any plan to regulate naturnl-gas
acthily in t he b.'\Sin that the Commission simply has no intention of ending what
has become a de .1c10 ban and that we are being forced to begin litigation against
the C.ommission, its member st.ates and executi'-e staff and others ,,iJo may ba'"e
'''Orktd in concert ,,;th them. to regain our right to access our mineral estates.
Sincerely,
J>( 1--at,
Bob Rutledge, llxeeuci"e Director, Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance
cc: U r i g ~ d i e r Ccneml Kent D. Savre
Governor Chris Christie
Gov<!rnor Thornns VV. Corbett
Cov(lrnor Andrc\\
1
M. Cuo1no
Kelly Heffner
Ccvel'llor Jock A. Markell
Joe Martens
Robert Martin
Collin P. O'Mam
Erik Rourke
Wayne County Commissioners (Pen""rl\'llilia)
Wayne/Pike County Farm Bureau (Pennsyh'llllia)

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Cnrol Collier, Executi>-e Director

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