drilling in OUR state forests

[Elana]

Industry officials, and their friends in Pennsylvania's General Assembly, have proposed rampant leasing of our state forests as an alternative to a natural gas extraction tax. Yet forestry experts are clear that rushing to lease additional state forest lands at the scales some have proposed will cause irrevocable damage to one of the Commonwealth’s most enduring natural and economic assets. One proposal is for the leasing of 390,000 additional acres of forest, which is more than 3 times what DCNR has said they can sustainable do. 31% of our state forests are already open for drilling.

Drilling cannot be accelerated without fundamentally altering the character and quality of our forests, including the streams within them. If there is any doubt about this, the legislature should require of DCNR a rigorous study of the potential harms to biological integrity, hunting, fishing, public recreation and tourism opportunities, and other economic uses of the forest and subject the study to vigorous inspection and debate.

Our representatives and senators must hear strongly from the fishing community that the long term health of our state forests is not an acceptable cost for the short-term filling of only a portion of the state budget deficit. Call your senator and representative TODAY! (use the box in the upper right hand corner of http://www.legis.state.pa.us to find your legislators). You can also contact me at drillinghasconsequences@gmail.com for more information.

 

[AlwaysWading]

These operations will not kill off the fishing for us. Once again we have some who are willing to spread falsehoods simply because they are against energy production. Tales of woe can be told from both sides, like how many construction sites were stopped or changed in a way that cost many times the original costs all due to some frog, turtle or minnow that in reality is meaningless and/or would see no harm to begin with.

We can take great care of mother Earth without having to act as if each and every bit of construction or energy production will destroy the animals that share the land and water with us.

 

[SonofZ3]

Try fishing the ANF, or Kinzua Creek out in McKean county, you can see real clearly exactly how "little" impact all the OGM development has had...

With the new State budget the DCNR no longer has say over its lands being leased, that decision has been shifted to the general assembly. Basically, the decision whether or not to lease has been taken away from those given the job of conserving the land, and given to individuals with little or no training in the field, and who are more likely to be affected by lobyists. Its open season now :-(

 

[tomgamber]

These drilling projects wouldn't be purchasing large amounts of cement products would they? I can't think of another reason why someone would suggest that emptying a stream would not be detrimental to a fish population. Enlighten me.

 

[troutbert]

Write your legislators. Send them your opinions on this topic.

You can't expect that your legislators will read this forum. If you don't write them they will never know your views.

As others have said, you can see for yourselves in the Allegheny National Forest. Or the Allegheny Industrial Forest, as some call it.

We should not allow that to happen on the our state forest lands. There are large acreages on private lands where they can drill for natural gas. They shouldn't industrialize our state forest lands.

 

[osprey]

Do you really beleive that any organism , from the smallest minnow or frog or snail is meaningless? If you really believe that i feel very sorry for you.

 

[greenghost]

SonofZ3 wrote:
With the new State budget the DCNR no longer has say over its lands being leased, that decision has been shifted to the general assembly. Basically, the decision whether or not to lease has been taken away from those given the job of conserving the land, and given to individuals with little or no training in the field, and who are more likely to be affected by lobyists. Its open season now :-(

You hit the nail on the head. I know the political lobbyists are pulling hard for "America's 2nd Independence" from imported fossil fuels.

The place I work for was actually involved in pitching to get the PR/marketing business for this project via a gas industry coalition. (I'm glad we didn't get the business because I don't think I could have worked on it.) According them, the Marcellus deposits represent a chance to supply the country's need for natural gas for decades.

I hate to be a stick in the mud but, imo -- given the political and financial machine behind this -- it won't be stopped by environmentalists until something terrible has happened. And given the scope of the proposed drilling, that could easily occur.

PS -- Obviously, the political power behind this goes beyond state.

 

[FishOn247]

Everytime I write a congressman I get back a BS form letter saying that they care about my issue, a summary of the bill and that they will vote the way they see best for the district/state/etc

 

[salvelinusfontinalis]

Yes i get those letters also and it can be frustrating. You know some intern or secretary e-mailed it and the congress man or gov. offical you sent it too never saw it.

shame how or government works.

 

[salmonoid]

SonofZ3 wrote:
Try fishing the ANF, or Kinzua Creek out in McKean county, you can see real clearly exactly how "little" impact all the OGM development has had...

With the new State budget the DCNR no longer has say over its lands being leased, that decision has been shifted to the general assembly. Basically, the decision whether or not to lease has been taken away from those given the job of conserving the land, and given to individuals with little or no training in the field, and who are more likely to be affected by lobyists. Its open season now :-(

I've fished Kinzua Creek on opening day weekend for eight years straight (minus the one year the nor'easter went through). Even in that short time, I've seen the quality of the fishing and the stream quality go downhill. The tributaries to Kinzua have suffered as well. The biggest problem that is visible is siltation. Taking a look at satellite maps of the area, it's easy to see that with how honeycombed the hillsides are with roads, the source of much of that siltation has been found. If we could manage to sink wells without all the roads, I daresay we could extract oil and gas with a lot less environmental impact.

The Marcellus Shale introduces another variable, which is the use of large amounts of water for hydro-fracturing. This has the potential to drawdown aquifers and stream flows (over time, say tens of years) and amounts to a lot of water to be treated. If the brine escapes untreated, in a large enough volume, I'm sure we'll be reading about fish kills.

There is a favorite stream I have in NC PA. While I'm pretty certain the valley itself will escape drilling, it's kind of moot, because all around the perimeter is a road, and on both sides of that road are wells and well pads. For a freestone stream in the woods, it's usually clear, but I was disheartened to hear from someone that it was flowing muddy after some heavy rain this summer.

Two pics - one shows the plastic burlap they put up to contain sediment, bulging full, and obviously doing a lot of good. The other shows all the sand/silt in the stream, pretty sad for a freestone stream. Unfortunately, this is what the upstream of every fallen piece of timber in the tributary looks like - silted in. The ironic thing is that on one of the tributaries, DCNR had a sign advertising their remediation work and I had to think how sad it was that we have streams that are classified as exception value that are silted in, so our state makes a project to remove the silt, rather than not permitting the road building in that area in the first place.

 

[SonofZ3]

Salmonoid- You're 100% spot on about the siltation in ANF area streams being the issue. Last summer Kinzua creek was coated in an orange silt (and when I say orange, I mean ORANGE). I didn't see or catch a fish out of the entire DHALO area any of the times I fished it. Oil was visible in among the rocks on the shore in the slow areas as well. My father and a family friend fished from the bridge at Westline down to the confluence of Kinzua and Thundershower run. They caught one fish each, both slightly downstream of where the clear water of Thundershower came in.

I hoped things would be better this year and the silt would've cleared up. It has somewhat, but I still get depressed every time I fish that stream. I've had days in the DHALO stretch during the white fly hatch where the water is just alive with rising fish. Trout rising in stretches I didn't even know held fish. Last year the orange silt killed the white fly hatch, this year it was up and raging. I'm still hoping for next year.