Pa. DEP secretary wants to build staff, transparency
DEP Community Relations Coordinator John Poister and DEP Secretary John Quigly discuss the Clean Power Plan and what it means for Pennsylvania.
John Quigley, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, speaks to the Observer-Reporter editorial board about the federal Clean Power Plan and its effect on Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania’s secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection wants to restore environmental justice at the agency, which is short-staffed and needs to be more transparent to the public.
DEP Secretary John Quigley also said he wants to put more inspectors on the ground at Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling sites, and pay for the beefed-up staff using Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan for a severance tax on the industry. Wolf’s budget, which has been met stiff Republican opposition, would put 50 additional DEP oil and gas workers in the Marcellus region, he said Thursday during a meeting with the Observer-Reporter’s editorial board.
“It’s not good,” Quigley said Tuesday, describing the DEP staff size.
“It’s not efficient. It’s the fault of the system,” he said.
Quigley said while the average state agency lost 6 percent of its staff in the past decade, the DEP is functioning with 14 percent fewer employees than it had in 2005.
“It was hollowed out, raided,” said Quigley, who was in the area for a DEP listening session in Waynesburg on the state’s plan to comply with stringent new federal clean power rules.
He is proposing to create an office of environmental justice within the department and hire “the right individual” to advise him on policy. He said he also would like a budget to equip DEP inspectors with improved technology that would make the agency’s records more accessible to the public.
As for the Marcellus industry, he said he supports improved regulations to protect the natural resources by ensuring manmade impoundments don’t leak at drilling operations, and wants to prohibit drilling near playgrounds and parks.
“It’s common-sense stuff. We need the industry to step up,” he said.
While drilling activity has slowed in the state, Quigley said he expects gas production will increase significantly if the Sunoco Mariner East Pipeline is completed across the state at the end of 2016.