[Durham INC] FW: NC Senate Committee Unveils Fracking Bill, Proposes Lifting the Ban

[Pat Carstensen]

See especially the first bullet below

Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:47:48 -0400
From: molly.diggins at sierraclub.org
Subject: NC Senate Committee Unveils Fracking Bill, Proposes Lifting the Ban
To: NC-LEADERS at LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG

(Note:  Want to help stop bad bills like this? Join the Chapter's Volunteer Lobby Corp.  On-line and in-person training will be offered next week. The short session of the General Assembly begins May 16.)
Molly


 Today a key energy committee chaired by Senator Bob Rucho (R-Mecklenberg)  presented legislation that would legalize fracking in North Carolina.  Aside from making fracking legal, the bill also contains numerous provisions of concern, including:


The intentional removal of local government control in the fracking process by invalidating existing local ordinances, and specifically prohibiting new ones;
A deliberate lack of transparency by limiting public record requests on industry activities;
The easing restrictions to explicitly allow for groundwater contamination up to a certain level.  Under existing rules, you can not put any substance in a well that will contaminate groundwater;
Restricting DENR from enforcing any environmental rule or safeguard that would prohibit fracking;
Delegating the authority to regulate the oil and gas industry to a costly new bureaucracy, the Oil and Gas Board, consisting of political appointments from the oil and gas industry;
Stripping environmental rulemaking authority from the Environmental Management Commission, the board currently tasked with creating environmental rules for every other regulated industry.  The new Board would have certain powers that were taken away from every other state commission in last year’s regulatory reform legislation; and,
Forcing unwilling landowners to have gas drilled from under their property if adjacent landowners agree to frack.  

The legislation contrasts sharply with the more conservative approach outlined earlier this month by Rep. Mitch Gillespie (R-McDowell), which calls for more study, with the possibility of legislation to legalize fracking left to a future session.















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