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New Gas Drilling Rules, More Staff for Pennsylvania’s Environmental Agency
Feb. 9: This post has been updated.
For months, the gas drilling industry and environmentalists alike have been fixated on New York, waiting for its environmental agency to hash out final drilling regulations so companies can take advantage of the vast gas reserves buried there.
But now some of those expectations can shift to New York’s neighbor to the south, Pennsylvania, where Gov. Edward Rendell has announced that the Department of Environmental Protection will nearly double its enforcement staff, open a new office closer to the drilling action and release new drilling regulations of its own.
In December, when ProPublica surveyed all 31 drilling states, we found that Pennsylvania was part of a national trend – as gas drilling ramped up, inspection staffing levels didn’t keep pace.
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