Auditor: Pennsylvania environment regulators hobbled amid oil and gas boom

A new state auditor general report has found that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) lacks the funding, staff and technology to adequately protect the environment from the state’s booming natural gas industry.

The report was released Tuesday, the same day that the DEP told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that oil and gas operations polluted water at least 209 times since 2007 – the first time the department released information about water contamination from hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” and other oil and gas wells across the state.

The study is a no-holds-barred critique of a department that Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said was caught off guard by the surge in natural gas drilling over the last decade.

The report found that DEP regulators often failed to issue official orders to fracking well operators who had polluted water. In the 15 cases of water pollution reviewed as part of the audit, the DEP was found to have issued only one order to remediate the pollution, the auditor general said.

“There are very dedicated hard-working people at DEP but they are being hampered in doing their jobs by lack of resources — including staff and a modern information technology system — and inconsistent or failed implementation of department policies, among other things,” DePasquale said in a statement.

“It is almost like firefighters trying to put out a five-alarm fire with a 20-foot garden hose. There is no question that DEP needs help and soon to protect clean water.”

DePasquale, a Democrat, campaigned on the promise to look into the state’s DEP. His review began in 2013, right after he assumed office.

Activists have warned that fracking — a process in which high volumes of water, sand, and chemicals are pumped into the ground to break up gas-rich rock — could cause a host of water contamination problems across the state. And as fracking has increased dramatically in Pennsylvania — from virtually nonexistent in 2008 to producing 3.1 trillion cubic feet of gas in 2013 — the DEP’s funding has kept essentially level.

That, the auditor general and environmental activists say, virtually guaranteed that the industry would go unchecked.

“When the industry ramps up and there isn’t the same increase in staff and funding for the DEP, then you know there’s a problem,” said Joanne Kilgour, the director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Sierra Club, an environmental protection organization. “The report felt like validation of what we’ve been saying for years to the DEP. It was extremely encouraging to see a state-level official come out and validate that perspective.”

DePasquale’s report also found that the DEP failed to respond to citizens’ complaints in the legally allotted time frame of 10 days, and that its complaint tracking system was inconsistent and possibly missing critical data.

“We could not determine whether all complaints received by DEP actually were entered into the system. What’s more, because of how DEP grouped related complaints, it is difficult to figure out exactly how many complaints were received, investigated and resolved by DEP,” DePasquale’s statement said.

The review also found that DEP did not keep records on the frequency with which wells were visited. DePasquale said DEP relies on a legal loophole that allows it to essentially inspect wells only when it feels it has the funding and resources to do so, and can therefore keep delaying inspections.

The auditor general’s office offered 29 recommendations for the DEP, ranging from finding a more reliable funding source for more frequent inspections to establishing new systems and technology to deal with the deluge of fracking permits and complaints.

The DEP disagreed with many of the criticisms of the report, saying it had updated many of its systems in the time it took to compile the report. But it said it would try to implement most of the report’s other recommendations.

The auditor general’s report, and the data provided to the Post Gazette, did not surprise environmental activists in the state, who say they have been pushing the DEP for years to step up inspections.

But the question of how to fix the DEP’s perceived lack of enforcement is more complicated.

Pennsylvania is the only mineral-rich state in the United States without a severance tax — a levy on drilling operations that is used to fund environmental and other state programs. That, activists say, leaves the state without the money needed to implement many of the auditor general’s recommendations.

“Their technology is totally outdated to keep up with what’s happening in the 21st century, but that requires funding to fix,” said Steve Hvozdovich, a campaign coordinator with Clean Water Action. “So as of now, I think they’re doing the best they can with what they’re given.”