EPA Cancels Water Delivery to Pa. Town

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reversed their decision to deliver fresh water to residents of a northeastern Pennsylvania village where residential wells were contaminated by a natural gas drilling operation, only 24 hours after promising them the water.

The about-face left furious residents scrambling for water for drinking, bathing and washing dishes.

Agency officials would not explain why they reneged on their promise, or say whether water would be delivered at a later date.

“We are actively filling information gaps and determining next steps in Dimock. We have made no decision at this time to provide water,” EPA spokeswoman Betsaida Alcantara said in an email to The Associated Press.

The state has found that at least 18 residential water wells were polluted.

The eleven families who sued Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. and were relying on water from the EPA say they have been without a reliable source of water since Cabot won permission from state environmental regulators to halt deliveries more than a month ago.

Cabot, which was banned in 2010 from drilling in a 9-square-mile area around the village, took legal responsibility for the Dimock methane contamination, but claims that water wells in the area were already tainted with methane before the company set up shop. They also say they met the state deadline to restore or replace Dimock’s water supply, installing treatment systems in some houses that have removed the methane.

But homeowners say their wells are tainted with methane gas and toxic chemicals that are used in hydraulic fracturing, a technique in which water, sand and chemicals are blasted deep underground to free natural gas from dense rock deposits.

Dimock resident Craig Sautner said an EPA staffer in Philadelphia told him Saturday the water delivery was canceled. He said the EPA staffer, on-scene coordinator Rich Fetzer, would not explain why.

“You can’t be playing with people’s lives like this,” said Sautner, whose well was polluted in September 2008, shortly after Cabot began drilling in the area.

Sautner and the other homeowners had been relying on deliveries of bulk water paid for by anti-drilling groups, but the last delivery was Monday, and some of them ran out.

The environmental group Water Defense, founded by actor Mark Ruffalo, said it would send a tanker from Washingtonville, N.Y., to replenish the residents’ supply.

Dimock has become a focal point in the national debate over the so-called fracking method, which has allowed energy companies to tap previously inaccessible reservoirs of natural gas while raising concerns about its possible health and environmental consequences. The industry says the technique is safe.

Gas drilling companies have flocked in recent years to the Marcellus Shale, a massive rock formation underlying New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia that’s believed to hold the nation’s largest deposit of natural gas. Pennsylvania has been the center of activity, with thousands of wells drilled in the past few years.

The latest twist in the three-year-old Dimock saga left residents with plenty of questions, but no answers.

“What happened? Who had the power here? Who had the power to change their minds? Was it the governor? Was it somebody from Washington? Was it Cabot? What happened? We don’t know. We’re really confused,” said Wendy Seymour, an organic garlic farmer.

Seymour said an EPA official in Philadelphia told her Friday that she could expect a delivery. On Saturday, another EPA official called her and “apologized for the confusion” and said EPA was still assessing the situation.

Claire Sandberg, executive director of Water Defense, said the EPA owed them an explanation.

“It’s tragic to see the EPA raise these people’s hopes and then dash them, to see the EPA suggest they were beginning to accept their responsibility to protect the public, and then back out a few hours later when these people are so desperate,” she said.

Obama regulated business less than Bush

If President Obama is killing business with all his liberal private sector hating regulations than former President Bush must have been launching predator missile attacks at corporations all across the country. As it turns out the Obama administration has actually introduced 5% fewer regulatory rules than Bush thru the same time period in their presidency’s.

The average annual cost to businesses is higher under Obama than under his predecessors though. The increase is estimated to total no less than $100 million and no more than $4.1 billion, or at most three one-hundredths of a percent of the total economy.

Republican presidential candidates say Obama is stifling job creation by imposing rules on businesses, and House Republicans have vowed to rein in proposed regulations on everything from the environment to health care to banking.

“This is getting picked up and talked about, but not for any good reason,” Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, said in an interview. “There’s nothing new about this attack: It comes and goes in good times and in bad.”

Obama approved 613 federal rules during the first 33 months of his term, while  Bush cleared 643 in the same time frame, according to an Office of Management and Budget statistical database.

The number of significant federal rules, those costing more than $100 million, has gone up under Obama, with 129 approved so far, compared with 90 for Bush, 115 for President Bill Clinton and 127 for Bush Sr. over the same period in their first terms. In part that’s due to $100 million having more worth in the past than it does now because of inflation.

In the last 12 months through the end of September, the cost range of new regulations is estimated to be $8 billion to $9 billion, a decrease from 2010, according to the non-partisan GAO.

That total put the average annual cost of regulations under Obama at about $7 billion to $11 billion, compared with the $6.9 billion average from 1981 through 2008 in current dollars. The record came in 1992 under George H.W. Bush when that total hit $20.9 billion in current dollars. In the last year of President Reagan’s term it was $16 billion in today’s dollars.

Republicans contend that the issue is about more than raw numbers. It’s about how businesses perceive the regulatory environment.

“This goes to the issue of uncertainty,” Jeff Rosen, a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Washington and outside adviser to Romney, said in an interview arranged by the campaign. “For many businesses it’s not only that they’ve been hit by all these rules in 2009 and 2010, but there are 219 economically significant rules coming down the pike.”

According to the National Federation of Independent Business, 18 percent of small business owners rate regulation as their most important problem, second to overall economic demand.

“I feel as though this is 1980 all over again, when we had a serious invasion of regulatory overkill,” C. Boyden Gray, who was a senior official in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, told a congressional panel today. “We’re at a stage now where things have just gotten out of control.”

All of this uncertainty and fear of regulation doesn’t seem to line up with reality. According to U.S. Labor Department statistics the impact of regulations on layoffs has been small. Of the 7,247 mass layoffs last year, those involving at least 50 workers, 18 were the result of government regulation. Of the 3,114 mass layoffs in the first half of this year, 11 were related to government regulation. By comparison, 1,053 mass layoffs were attributed to business demand.

Obama has taken steps to address or some may say cave to Republican criticism. In January, he issued an order forcing all departments to avoid direct regulation and to take a look at current rules and scrap those harming the economy. In September, he squashed his own proposal for the Environmental Protection Agency to tighten smog rules. That decision has raised concerns about whether the president will implement, scrap or scale back a handful of other pending regulations estimated to cost at least $1 billion a year. Those rules include limiting pollution from power plants, setting pollution standards for boilers, limits on how many hours truck drivers can spend behind the wheel each day, and requirements for rear-view cameras on vehicles.

GOP looks to add environment to list of casualties in budget battle

The battle of what to cut and what not to cut continues to rage between Democrats and Republicans over our governments budget. It appears though that both parties are tentatively working on a deal that would see cuts coming in the amount of 33 billion over the next 6 months, a little more than half of what the Republican controlled House recently passed.

According to some anonymous Democratic lawmakers, part of that deal would see President Obama going along with some GOP proposals that will roll back key environmental protections. Some of the proposed cuts would stop the government from being able to regulate greenhouse gases, cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay and shutting down mountaintop mines. What’s worse is the President’s round about way of agreeing to a bill that he knows will anger a large portion of his liberal base. According to members of the Congressional Black Caucus the administration stated that House GOP proposals restricting the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate would have to make it into the final bill, so as to control how the White House’s position will appear. If all this is true it looks like Obama is ready, willing and able to once again give his base another reason to be disappointed in him, but then again in his desperate bid to appear centrist for the next election what’s one more disappoint for those who worked so tirelessly to get him in office in the first place?