Last year, Governor Rendell closed the budget loophole by selling off access to state forest lands to natural gas drillers. Since the 50s, any lease revenues went into Conservation. Governor Rendell's legacy will include putting a serious crimp in this longstanding best-practice in forest stewardship.

Environmental champ and Delaware County legislator, Rep. Greg Vitali, has introduced HB 2235 to prevent the Governor from doing it again. He wrote about it in today's Inqy, on the same day as the Governor's Budget Address. Here's an excerpt:

Fracking a single well typically requires millions of gallons of water. Several acres of land must be cleared for the drilling pad. Access roads, a water sediment basin, and other infrastructure are installed, and a high volume of truck traffic is required to transport drilling equipment and water to and from the site. All this activity has an impact on the forest as well as on water quality.

Right now, there are only a handful of Marcellus wells producing gas on Pennsylvania forest land. About another hundred wells are planned or being drilled. Five to six thousand more will be drilled in the next 15 years, according to conservative estimates.

No one knows what the cumulative environmental impact of this drilling will be. We need to stop leasing state forest land for the purpose until we can better assess the consequences.