Vitali's bill to put a moratorium on Natural Gas Drilling in State Forests (HB 2235) was voted out of committee just now. he and Rep. Levdansky led this charge, along with a coalition of Democrats calling themselves the Green Dogs. The vote was 16-9. GOP members Harper and Everett voted for the bill, which is great news.

Read HB 2235 here.

The Green Dogs believe that they were sold a bill of goods by the Governor last year. The Governor asked them to support his budget with some prescribed forest leasing. In exchange, he said he wouldn't ask to lease more land this year.

But he has.

Hit Read More, below, yo.

Right behind Norma Fiorentino's house, they have been drilling for natural gas. Some of the gas is coming from under Norma's property, so she gets a little money for it (not all that much so far, though). She also got a present on New Year's Day. Her water well exploded all over her yard. Now she can't drink the water from her tap anymore and she's worried that her kitchen might blow up.

Good times, right? And when the checks stop coming, the gas won't stop. It will still be there in the water table. Totally ruined. Won't that be great when she her or her heirs try to sell her land?

Clean Water Action is meeting with people and talking to them about their experience living nearby or around natural gas drilling rigs.

So what can you do? Watch this video, then I have two quick things for you after the jump.

I woke up Monday morning to hear on WHYY that Governor Rendell had abandoned the idea of imposing a tax on the extraction of natural gas from our state's massive but deeply buried reserves of natural gas. If he'd given a better explanation for his decision, I might be able to keep quiet about it, but the reason he said we shouldn't do it because it would kill a fledgling industry. Hogwash. Everywhere else the industry operates has a severance tax already and we've got more gas here than all of them combined (well, okay, we have the most, hands down -- no one knows exactly).

Besides, it's not a new industry at all. It's the same rigs, same teams, same operations already operating in Texas and Wyoming and Colorado. Moving to a new state doesn't make it a new industry. In fact, moving those rigs around to tap new gas plays is just how the business works. They already know how to do it. That's the essence of what they do.

So, the Inquirer did an editorial today spelling this out with numbers. Why, they ask, should we believe that a modest tax would quash this operation when the revenue forecast of the main players are so rosy? It seems like there is plenty of money there.

Some context the Inquirer didn't mention. Did you know that we don't tax the extraction of any natural resource from our state? Not coal. Not gas. Not wood. Not freaking gravel. Why? Because the coal industry is so powerful here that they have time to argue about any severance tax because they believe that as soon as one resource gets taxed that would take us that much closer to taxing coal. And they don't want that to be taxed ever. So they fight them all.

Awesome.

But we had a Governor who had said he would back taxing gas and Democrats who said they would, too. We had that, but now we don't anymore. It's too bad. Fortunately, the House Dems seem to be standing pat on Severance Tax, and that's the right call. Rep. George told PA Environmental Digest that he's standing firm on the Severance Tax and that Speaker McCall is with him.
Clean Water Action Pennsylvania

believes that the severance tax is so important that we canvassed part of McCall's district on it recently and delivered a stack of letters to him from locals who agreed: tax the shale and make it pay for environmental protection.

In fact, we specifically argue that a piece of the tax should be used for hiring and training enough DEP inspectors that one can be on site for each well bore at the stage of siting, drilling, cementing, stimulating and the closing of waste pits.

Posting our action alert on natural gas drilling in reaction to the Governor's suggestion that it is off the table during budget negotiations. Please contact him and state legislators!

Multi-billion dollar energy companies have spent $1 million in lobbying money in Pennsylvania this year to try to stop legislators from enacting a severance tax on natural gas extraction. Their money appears to be working, as the state budget negotiations are going forward without a severance tax.

These companies stand to make billions off of our natural resources, and yet Pennsylvania remains the only state with large operations that does not charge a severance tax. These fees can help to cover costs for damaged roads and bridges, contaminated drinking water and other environmental regulations. Instead, the legislature would foist those costs onto Pennsylvania taxpayers rather than force industry to clean up their own mess.