Aug 22, 2010 By James Pletcher Jr. 9 min read

One county commissioner compared burgeoning exploration for natural gas “a thunderstorm” that can be good or bad. In relation to that, task forces and advisory councils to deal with the impact of Marcellus Shale drilling are popping up all over Pennsylvania.

Fayette County Commissioner Angela Zimmerlink organized one in July and the Fayette Chamber of Commerce is hoping to create a Marcellus Shale Business Committee.

The chamber has scheduled a formation meeting from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday at its offices at 65 W. Main St., Uniontown.

“The goal of the committee will be to focus on finding ways for our business community to gain the most positive impact of this growing industry,” a chamber spokesperson said.

To attend the chamber meeting, call 724-437-4571 for more information. There will be a cost involved since a light lunch also will be served.

Meanwhile, Penn State Cooperative Extension Service has been holding online seminars concerning Marcellus Shale for the past several months. The most recent, held Thursday, covered the subject of forming task forces.

Guest speakers at the “Local Natural Gas Task Force Initiatives” were three county commissioners, Mark Smith of Bradford County, Pamela Tokar-Ickes of Somerset County and Paul Heimel of Potter County.

Each of those commissioners explained how and why they formed Marcellus Shale task forces.

Each also stressed the importance of getting the facts, education for the committee and public, making sure to include as many concerned parties as possible from environmental, emergency management, economic development and other areas and building relationships with state agencies whose job it is to oversee drilling and the gas industry.

“Bradford County has about 63,000 residents and is the largest county in Pennsylvania geographically. We have more miles of dirt roads than any other county in the state and we are located in the hot spot of Marcellus Shale,” Smith said.

He added that when he was first sworn into office several years ago, there were no natural gas issues facing Bradford County. “It came upon us in the spring of 2008 and as a result of some of the issues, we formed a natural gas advisory committee,” Smith said.

“We have over 1,000 permits for Marcellus wells in Bradford County. The gathering lines are going in all over the county, and we are in good proximity to other major natural gas transmission lines. We have 25 water withdrawal sites and 42 water impoundments and 50 lines transmitting to Marcellus sites,” he said.

“We formed our advisory committee to see how drilling was impacting the county and started it as an informal group. Our council includes the three county commissioners, township officials, state police, the county sheriff, banking and economic development representatives.

“We have used the committee to develop a relationship with the natural gas industry,” Smith added.

“Our committee structure is pretty simple. We started out as an informal group and over time we have been working to become a more formalized body. The main body meets on a quarterly basis to see what the subcommittees are working on,” Smith said.

“Our focus lately has been educating ourselves and we have done a lot of tours. Committee members have been engaged in conversation with people in the industry. We have done a lot of public education work. We also have gotten a lot of cooperation from the Penn State Extension. This has been a great relationship for us,” he said.

The committee has created opportunities for its local businesses, including holding a Marcellus Shale Business Expo this summer, where more than 200 industry and business representatives networked.

Smith explained other issues the committee has approached include emergency management, mapping gas activity in the county, safety, truck traffic, road maintenance and concerns about water and methane in the water from the drilling process.

“We have had more accidents with trucks and other vehicles on the roads and emergency response has been an issue for us. We have a lot of well sites and keeping up to speed with that with an all-volunteer fire department has been a real strain,” Smith said.

“There are also social impacts of the natural gas industry that we have talked about – a housing shortage, increased need for law enforcement and state police and social service demands, like drug and alcohol treatment, have gone up.

“One of the number-one issues is we have no direct revenue from it to deal with those issues,” Smith said.

Other important issues the committee has dealt with, Smith said, include building relationships within the gas industry “so we can point people in the right direction when there is a problem” and educating the public, “which we will continue to do and improve upon to create an environment where people are well informed.”

Somerset County Commissioner Tokar-Ickes repeated many of the issues her county has faced, although she said Marcellus Shale development hasn’t become as major an issue yet.

“We have had some impact here from Marcellus shale. The story in Somerset County is a little bit different. We are witnessing an uptick but we are far from the development in Bradford. We have watched the development in northern tier and in the southwest corner of the state. We have a growing sense of the opportunities and the challenges,” she said.

Tokar-Ickes explained Somerset County had a jump in interest between 2006 and 2008 in Marcellus exploration. But then, she added, “the bubble burst in the price for natural gas and it slowed down considerably.

“We knew about Marcellus, but I didn’t know much about it until I attended a statewide county commissioners’ meeting in 2008.

“All the information was stressing the fact that county government would need to get its hands around this issue. I realized we were sitting right in the middle of this thing and it would likely be an issue in Somerset County. The bubble burst in 2008 and that turned out to be a good thing for us because it gave us the time to educate ourselves and prepare,” Tokar-Ickes said.

She added there have been “waves of activity in oil and gas in Somerset County over the years.

“We have 28 local wells that are permitted and in some stage of development. Less than half of those are active. We are seeing the majority of the development in the southern part of Somerset County. With that information in mind, we needed to put the pieces together.

“There were three things that became very apparent to us. We knew we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. We could learn from others. And, we used the timing in the downturn of gas prices to organize,” she said.

Somerset County formed its task force in 2009, she said. It includes the county commissioners, planning and emergency management personnel, township supervisors and representatives from the Penn State Extension Service. The planning group determined that education would be its key function. Other areas the group focuses on are economic development, environment, public policy, planning and public safety.

“The benefits (from Marcellus Shale development) identified by the group were local spending, job creation and the royalty impact on the local economy. Threats were identified as the environment, public safety and protection of our water resources,” Tokar-Ickes said.

She said there have been visible benefits already with local trucking and welding companies getting more work to build tanks and haul water that is used in the drilling process.

“One of the biggest roadblocks is to balance fact and fiction. Another is to sustain the level of interest that we need at this stage.

“We really don’t know how big this is really going to be,” Tokar-Ickes said.

“In Potter County, we like to compare the situation to an approaching storm. We have been hearing the thunder and now we are starting to feel the drizzle,” Potter County Commissioner Paul Heimel, said.

“The storm is going to last a long, long time. A storm is not always a bad thing, just as our gardens and farms rely on precipitation. We have experienced a loss of population and have an older population and a troubling out-migration of young people.

“There are also just as many or more people not focused on the economy but on the environmental issues. They are worried and cherish our environment. We have a lot of things that are appealing to tourists. We feel these could be compromised in pursuit of some quick economic fixes. We do not want to lose it.”

Mostly rural, Heimel described Potter County as “God’s country. We have four traffic signals countywide. It’s a great place to live if you can make a living.

“We are trying to pull together the economic interests, the business community, the environmental representatives. That has been our goal.

“We want to reach a balance between those claiming the environment will be destroyed and those who say how wonderful the Marcellus Shale will be,” Heimel said.

Potter County, he explained, created a task force that began meeting monthly and is now meeting every other month. Heimel said it’s important to bring in speakers who are interesting and well informed.

“You need key players and municipal officials to be engaged; emergency services and public safety, it’s important to have them involved right from the start; and economic development and jobs. You need environmental people and must police your task force so you don’t end up with too many PR types,” he said.

The most important job the task force, he added, “is to disseminate accurate information. We have heard the thunder and felt the drizzle and we are tapping into every source we can to sort out the truth from the propaganda to see what kind of impact this will have on Potter County.”

The Potter County task force’s primary mission “is to protect our environment and way of life, while at the same time we reach out to tap into this economic opportunity.”