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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Surface Owners, "Greens": No New Law? Don't Issue New Marcellus Permits

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Monday, March 14, 2011   

Charleston, WV - Amid charges and counter-charges over the State Legislature's failure to pass a law updating natural gas drilling rules, surface owners and environmental groups are calling for a moratorium on new Marcellus Shale drilling permits. Dave McMahon, co-founder of the West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization, says the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) just doesn't have the inspectors to deal with the explosion of drilling.

"There are 6,000 conventional wells out there that they haven't gotten plugged, that are sitting out there on people's land, that may cause pollution, letting people think they can't sign new leases. The DEP doesn't have the staff to make those wells get plugged. We certainly think that ought to happen before we go issuing new permits."

The bill died amid opposition from small drilling companies that are critical of added regulation. Another complication was the inability of lawmakers to negotiate differences between House and Senate versions.

But McMahon notes that lawmakers had time to pass a tax break for companies that want to turn the natural gas into feedstock for the chemical industry.

"We think it's particularly unfortunate that they didn't pass the regulatory bill, but they went ahead and passed the tax break for Marcellus shale - a tax break on compressors, etc., that we think was unnecessary."

The state DEP has only 17 inspectors to police what McMahon describes as the industrialization of rural West Virginia - thousands of inactive and hundreds of active wells. The agency's request to double that workforce died along with the bill. McMahon calls the state unprepared and says lawmakers have failed to change that.

"They can now drill one of these huge, noisy sites within 200 feet of your home. In fact, a provision was taken out of the bill that would have given $2 million to the DEP - that got taken out of the tax bill."

After passing the Senate and the House Judiciary Committee, the bill that would have updated drilling rules for the first time in 30 years died in the House. That, in spite of public testimony from scores of people in favor of the legislation. McMahon blames the speaker, Delegate Rick Thompson, for delaying it to death.




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