While California is thinking about banning fracking, other states in the U.S. are working to greenlight the practice. This involves either lifting existing bans, or enacting rules to ease the way for fracking operations, or even to criminalize discussion about fracking chemicals.
Anson County North Carolina has an existing ban on fracking. A recent law proposed in the N.C. legislature would not only criminalize disclosure of fracking chemicals, making it a Class I felony to disclose those “trade secrets”, but it would invalidate any local ban on fracking. Such as the ban in Anson County, as reported by the Anson Record.
That report quotes N.C. Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger as saying that the Energy Modernization Act is “expected to help the state jumpstart a thriving new industry, attract thousands of well-paying jobs and push toward long-term energy independence.”
The bill, the Energy Modernization Act, Senate Bill 786
, was sponsored by Sens. Bob Rucho (R-Mecklenburg), Buck Newton (R-Wilson) and Andrew Brock (R-Davie). It passed the N.C. Senate by a vote of 47-35. It’s heading to the N.C. House next.
has more on the criminilization aspect of the bill. The proposed law is described as having some aspects attractive to environmentalists, and was meant to smooth out a process being developed by state regulators. Frackers are supposed to disclose information to the state, and make it available to emergency responders. But all the state officials to whom the information is disclosed then must maintain confidentiality, hence the need to criminalize disclosure of trade secrets. Supposedly.
, the order is facing lots of criticism. PennEnvironment called it a “horrible precedent” – “We have made it so easy to drill for natural gas on private land. It begs the question — is any place off-limits?”John Hanger, who was state environmental protection secretary under former Gov. Ed Rendell, said “Corbett just does not understand that we cannot drill our way to prosperity, and we cannot drill our way to a balanced budget.” Hanger was running for Governor, but dropped out just before the Primary.
, to say the executive order protects the environment while it does the opposite. Their post describes Pennsylvania’s state forests as an economic driver, and a storehouse of biodiversity, etc. would skip all the rules making process, and just let fracking start. Except for the ban in Northern Illinois, where there isn’t much shale potential anyway..The Associated Press quoted Jennifer Cassel, a staff attorney with the Environmental Law and Policy Center as saying “[the bill] does certainly appear to remove the authority of the Department of Natural Resources to adopt any rules, and move that authority to the Legislature to define how fracking is going to be carried out in Illinois.” The Chicago Tribune quotes Barry Matchett, co-legislative director and policy advocate for the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center, saying “Our quick read is that this bill eliminates the rulemaking process and then proceeds to rewrite the entire bill. Just ridiculous.”
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