One size doesn’t fit all: Oil and natural gas zoning focus of W&J seminar
Dennis Puko gives his presentation during the Managing Marcellus program held Thursday at the Burnett Center on the campus of Washington & Jefferson College. Seated at the table are Jim McElfish, moderator, Allen Cohen and John Trant, right.
Jim McElfish presents three panelists, Dennis Puko, Allen Cohen and John Trant, right, at the Managing Marcellus program held Thursday at the Burnett Center on the campus of Washington & Jefferson College.
Oil and natural gas production, of course, is a multifaceted creature that polarizes. An understated but vital section of the beast was on display Thursday at Washington & Jefferson College.
Local regulation was the focus of “Managing Marcellus: Land Use, Zoning and Addressing Impacts of Shale Gas Drilling After the PA Supreme Court Act 13 Rulings.” The program, from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, featured speakers who were experts in law and municipal operations and drew an audience of about 60 inside Yost Auditorium in the Burnett Center.
The initial speaker, Jack Ubinger, a legal and public policy adviser, established the core guideline for local drilling when he said,”Municipalities are permitted to regulate where oil and gas drilling can take place, but are not permitted to regulate the design and operation.”
John Trant, a certified planner and president of Strategic Solutions in Mt. Lebanon, said a municipal ordinance on drilling should be clear and all-encompassing.
“You need good definitions. Your oil and gas regulations should include everything you want to regulate. The goal is to consider these regulations within the other regulations in the zoning ordinance.”
Trant was among a three-member panel who addressed this subject during a morning session, then did so again – in greater detail – in the afternoon.
Kurt Klapkowski, of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, preceded the panel during the morning. The DEP is frequently under siege over drilling, and Klapkowski is the director of DEP’s Bureau of Oil and Gas Planning and Program Management. So he spoke from experience.
“If oil and gas development is to occur in certain areas, you have to assess the possible harmful impact,” he said. “There are concerns about noise, emergency resources, protecting water resources …
“Cooperating with local governments is probably the most important aspect we deal with.”
He acknowledged the DEP is awash in paperwork but wants to develop a database where anyone can go to view information about drill sites.
“We’d like to have a Google Maps-type site where you can pull up everything about a well,” he said. “That’s a ways away, unfortunately.”
Klapkowski also spoke as an experienced Washington County voice. He grew up in East Finley Township and graduated from W&J.
Jim McElfish, senior attorney and director of the Sustainable Use of Land Program, was the moderator of the morning panel made up of Trant; Denny Puko, of the state Department of Community and Economic Development; and Allen Cohen, of Cohen Municipal Planning Consultants.
Puko advised communities that lack oil and gas regulations, or don’t currently have drilling but may someday, to enact those rules.
“If you don’t have such an ordinance and you want to regulate oil and gas activities,” he said, “you need to develop a zoning ordinance in which these actions appear.”
Cohen, hobbled by a recent knee injury, stood firmly behind the idea each town should develop a comprehensive plan related to shale. And, echoing the sentiments of others, maintained that ordinances should vary from town to town.
“You have to draft an ordinance that fits each community’s needs,” he said. “No one ordinance fits all.”