The Inquirer recently printed a cheerleadery puff-piece about Marcellus Shale development in Southwest and Northwest, Pennsylvania. Too bad they didn't combine the story with about how the drillers managed to weasel out of a severance tax (and the Governor's very unconvincing rhetoric about it).

Today, DEP admitted that it took them ten months to get Cabot, the drilling company that wrecked the water supply of Norma Fiorentino, to provide any water at all to locals whose water supply has been wrecked (that's what the linked press release means by "interim solution.")

Clearly, DEP isn't quite cutting it, which makes Secretary Hanger's objection that they are hiring up ring a little hollow. This is the same DEP that decided they'd trust any engineer willing to sign off and say that a drill site complied with environmental regs. So far, the Commonwealth is doing nothing in the face of the drilling onslaught but standing down.

Since it was a front page story, we had to criticize it. They didn't print my letter so I thought I'd throw it up here:

To the Editor-

Clean Water Action takes exception to the portrayal of Marcellus Shale development in Pennsylvania in your article "Pa. Tapped, Drillers Not." Your paper gave short shrift to the destrurctiveness of shale drilling, dismissing it out-of-hand with a quote from the CEO of a natural gas company. As someone who has made several visits to the heart of drilling country, visited rigs and talked at length with leasholders: it's not all smiles in Marcellus land. In many cases, the checks aren't that big and they don't do anything but shrink. Meanwhile, residents wonder if they'll still be able to stand living on their land once the drillers are done. It's only going to get worse Philadelphians have to start paying to clean frack water out of our drinking water because we haven't protected ourselves the way New York City has.

Click read more for the rest!

There are only a few hundred wells in Pennsylvania so far, yet what have we already seen: communities afraid to drink their water, loss of thousands of acres of trees, three streams that have seen dramatic loss (or eradication) of aquatic life due to driller negligence, thousands upon thousands more diesel trucks on county roads and at least one water well that blew up. How can you print a piece that dismisses these very real events with a sentence on "environmental concerns" that are "surmountable?" We are concerned because there have already been disasters. What's going to happen when we have one-hundred times as many wells here?

It's been a year since the aforementioned water well blew up. I just spoke to a woman in Dimock today that told me that the company responsible, Cabot Oil And Gas, has provided the locals with their first delivery of replacement drinking water since the incident. It's good news, but overdue. How many more Pennsylvanians will have to fight for water restitution despite the fact that their water never should have been wrecked in the first place? Despite being led to believe they were safe, even though the drillers wreck water supplies everywhere they go?

Also today, DEP announced the revocation of three permits on sites that their ill-advised Marcellus fast-tracking system permitted through. How many more poorly planned projects have been approved because the Commonwealth refuses to look closely enough? On the same day as your article on the big Marcellus paycheck, your paper published a much more informative piece on the politics of a natural gas severance tax: "How Marcellus Shale gas came to be tax-exempt in Pa." If only the rest of your coverage were in the same spirit. Just as the drillers have successfully crafted the fiction of a delicate industry to prevent paying their fair share, your piece contributed to the fiction of safety for leaseholders and the public that drilling companies have manufactured just as carefully.