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Senate Budget Hearing: DEP Plans To Add Safe Drinking Water Program Staff Ahead Of Fee Revenue To Address Deficiencies

DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell told the Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday DEP is moving aggressively to correct the deficiencies EPA identified in the state Safe Drinking Water Program by hiring additional staff ahead of finalizing the drinking water permit fee increase.

McDonnell said the fee increase will fund about 33 new positions, including 17 more field inspectors. An analysis of the cash flow in the special fund supporting the program, he said, will allow them to get many of the new staff onboard now to begin their training.

This is a much more aggressive schedule than originally anticipated.

Here’s a quick summary of the other issues addressed at the hearing that are different from the issues raised at the House Appropriations Committee hearing Monday--

-- Oil & Gas Well Permit Fee Increases: In response to a question from Sen. Gene Yaw (R-Lycoming), Majority Chair of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, McDonnell said a proposal, still being developed, to increase well permit fees for unconventional oil and gas well permits is needed because the Well Plugging Account used to fund the Oil and Gas Regulatory Program is losing $500,000 a month. The number of new permits received is down and along with it permit revenue. Sen. Yaw noted DEP at one point had 135 staff working on many more permit applications and now they have 190 staff, but review times were dropping. McDonnell said they have made changes like allocating workload between regions to drop review times from around 300 days in the DEP Southwest Office to the point now that new permits coming in the door are being completed within the 45 day mandated by law. He did say they still have a backlog they are working on.

-- Proposed DRBC Fracking Moratorium: In response to questions from Sen. Lisa Baker (R-Luzerne), McDonnell said DEP was involved with the Delaware River Basin Commission decision to propose the moratorium because they represent Pennsylvania on the Commission. He explained DRBC has different authority for regulating water quality than the Susquehanna River Basin Commission which has handled water withdrawal requests from unconventional drilling operations largely without problems. McDonnell said he believes drilling operations can be regulated safely and that DEP’s regulations are very good. Asked about possible property taking claims if the moratorium is put in place, McDonnell said that is an issue for the courts to decide.

-- Abandoned Oil & Gas Wells: In response to questions from Sen. Yudichak (D-Luzerne), Minority Chair of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, and Sen. Art Haywood (D-Philadelphia), McDonnell said there are as many as 200,000 abandoned conventional oil and gas wells across the state, but most of their locations have not been identified because many are over 100 years old. DEP has an inventory of about 8,000 abandoned conventional oil and gas wells that would cost over $350 million to properly plug. He said the unconventional drilling industry has been a partner in plugging many abandoned conventional wells and conventional oil and gas drillers have been plugging wells under a new Good Samaritan Outreach Program or voluntarily in other cases.

-- Methane Emission Controls On Oil & Gas Operations: Sen. Yaw asked about the status of DEP permits covering methane emissions from oil and gas operations. McDonnell said the final versions of General Permit-5 and a new GP-5A setting emission limits for unconventional oil and gas well operations should be finalized in the next month or two and become effective 60 days later. He said the timing should allow these permits to be included in the next phase of DEP’s ePermitting program.

-- Permit Review Reform: Sen. John Yudichak (D-Luzerne) noted the Senate passed Senate Resolution 226 that requires the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to conduct a performance evaluation of DEP’s Chapter 102 (Erosion and Sedimentation) and Chapter 105 (Stream Encroachments) permit programs to determine how they could be changed to speed up permit reviews and asked for an update on DEP permit reforms now underway. McDonnell said he welcomed the review called for in the Resolution because “you can’t have enough eyes on this issue.” He said there isn’t one thing that caused permit review issues at DEP-- lack of staff, funding cuts were certainly part of the problem, but so was a lack of investments in information technology and training for DEP staff and consultants reviewing and submitting applications. He noted DEP has gone heavily into ePermitting in the mining program first because that was the most complicated, to be followed by higher volume programs like radiation protection x-ray machine licenses, some Air Quality permits and oil and gas well permits later this year. The recent announcement of changes to the Chapter 105 General Permit-5 will also simplify that permit process for applicants and DEP.

-- Proposed CAFO Permit Fee Increase: In response to a question by Sen. Elder Vogel (R-Beaver), Majority Chair of the Senate Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, McDonnell said DEP was proposing an increase in the PAG-12 NPDES General Permit fee to better cover the cost of permit reviews. Currently, the program costs $600,000 and current fees amount to just $15,000. Even with fee increase, it would cover only about one-third the cost of permit reviews.

-- Repealing Pittsburgh Low-RVP Gasoline: In response to a question from Sen. Vogel, McDonnell said the Environmental Quality Board finalized the regulation to repeal the low-RVP summer gasoline requirement for the Pittsburgh region and he would work with EPA to see if it could become effective for this summer’s ozone season starting May 1.

-- Waste Tire Cleanup: In response to a question from Sen. David Argall (R-Schuylkill), McDonnell said DEP has cleaned up 40 million waste tires since 1996 and has two large waste tire piles remaining with about 700,000 tires that are going to prove challenging to cleanup.

-- Special Funds: Sen. Pat Browne (R-Lehigh), Majority Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, expressed concerns about the potential negative balances in some DEP special funds-- Radiation Protection, Well Plugging Account (Oil & Gas Regulation), Clean Air and Hazardous Sites Cleanup (which they know must be dealt with) and others. McDonnell said DEP has or will be proposing permit fee increases to deal with some of these potential deficits based on the 3-year review cycle of the adequacies of fee levels.

Click Here for Secretary McDonnell’s budget testimony.

Click Here for video of Senate Appropriations Committee budget hearings and the complete hearing schedule.

The initial budget hearings for DEP are now concluded.

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