Feb 2, 2016 By Joe Sestak 5 min read

During my 31 years in the U.S. Navy, I saw firsthand some of the most environmentally sensitive places on the planet and the consequences of environmental and conservation failures.

And as a Pennsylvanian born and raised, I well-know the lessons of the demise of the anthracite coal industry, where the commonwealth was left with a $15 billion cleanup of 2,500 miles of damaged streams and 250,000 acres of contaminated land because of the lack of adequate regulation and the absence of proper oversight.

That’s why when I returned to Pennsylvania and was elected to serve as a congressman, I fought to try and ensure that my fellow Pennsylvanians would not have to sacrifice their clean water, clean air, natural lands, and local roads and infrastructure in the hasty pursuit of Marcellus shale gas.

I called for a moratorium on Marcellus shale fracking because I was not convinced we had strong enough environmental, health, and property safeguards, and I was not satisfied that people would have the access to just compensation should even the best safeguards fail.

As I said recently to the statewide press corps at the Pennsylvania Press Club in Harrisburg, my position remains the same today because it was based on the facts then – almost all of which remain true now.

For example, fracking still falls under the so-called “Halliburton Loophole” that was slipped into President Bush’s energy bill in 2005 and allows energy companies to ignore the rules of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

Safe water protections exist for a reason, and fracking involves using huge amounts of water laced with undisclosed chemicals that continue to contaminate drinking water across Pennsylvania.

It’s why I cosponsored the FRAC Act to close this loophole, and why I wrote a letter to the administrator of the EPA about the dangers of these drilling operations which I said were expanding in Pennsylvania at an unprecedented rate and scale without proper protections for the health of Pennsylvanians.

Unfortunately, since the very beginning of the Marcellus shale boom, too many of our leaders and regulators let the voice of the shale industry drown out the desires of Pennsylvanians to have safe water, and too many argued for industry interests to the detriment of Pennsylvanians.

The Halliburton Loophole remains wide open, and people’s health has remained inadequately protected. It is why I remain concerned today about the still-unknown extent of the damage fracking has already done to our Commonwealth.

Just last May, scientists finally linked a key chemical of fracking fluid to water samples taken in 2012 from three wells in Bradford County.

In August, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection finished an almost four-year investigation in Lycoming and Tioga counties, conclusively determining that methane gas from natural gas wells had migrated off-site and impacted private drinking water wells serving homes in the region.

And in October, at least five private water supplies in Potter County were polluted with drilling additives and a surfactant fluid known as “F-485” and “Rock Drill Oil 150 (0428).”

The people have suffered, while the fracking companies and their consultants prosper from our shared natural resources.

Moreover, hydraulic fracturing would not be so successful today if it were not for our shared investment as citizens in the development of the industry. It was the Department of Energy (DOE) – using our tax dollars – that sponsored the initial industry research to estimate the volume of natural gas in shale reservoirs.

And it was our taxpayer investment in the DOE that developed the diamond-tipped drill bits for geothermal energy that were then used by the natural gas industry. Even the Navy sonar we created to track Russian submarines was repurposed at great taxpayer expense for drillers to track shale deposits.

Without the above, frackers would not be in Pennsylvania today.

It’s just one more way in which the shale boom has been unfair to Pennsylvanians: we have not seen a fair return on our investment that created the industry, because of opposition by consultants and lobbyists to a tax on the wealth that is coming from fracking.

Yes, we need a moratorium until health and environmental concerns are fully addressed, but we should still not lift it until there is a fair severance tax put in place – after all, we paid for its development.

Our citizens shouldn’t have to bear the burden of the increased cost to our infrastructure, risks to our health and safety, and any ancillary environmental degradation due to the fracking industry.

While I wish we would have had a moratorium when I called for one years ago, it is also worth noting that there is no better time than now – economically – to put one in place.

Because the rise in supply of natural gas has exceeded the rise in demand – and as efficiency has increased as well – the price of natural gas in December is the lowest it has been since 1994.

In fact, this month’s edition of the Oil & Gas Journal cited a Moody’s study to predict that oversupply this year “will continue to weigh down” the U.S. natural gas market leading to “capital spending reductions of at least 20-25 percent in 2016 across the exploration and production business.”

There is no better time than yesterday for a moratorium, which is why it is imperative that we act today.

Joe Sestak is a former Navy admiral and U.S. Congressman. He is seeking the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in the April 26 primary.