By Dr. Richard Kaplan

The Pennsylvania Legislature has been considering and voting on a package of bills called “Energize Pennsylvania.” These initiatives are under the aegis of the Republican majority to further the economic needs, i.e. profits, of the fossil fuel industry. 

From tax subsidies to spraying oil and gas drilling waste brine on public roads, the Legislature dissembles the financial needs of their true constituents, the fossil fuel companies, hiding them under the “jobs jobs jobs” mantra. 

When these industries deplete these resources, jobs would no longer be their focus (see below-- the timber industry in PA). 

Consider the lack of support in the Federal Government for continuing to tax coal companies to support the Federal Black Lung Disability Trust Fund which supports miners with black lung disease.

To use public Pennsylvania roads to spray waste material is to pass the responsibilities of the drilling industry to clean up their waste to the public who will have to just live with spraying of materials whose toxicities may not be well-characterized.

To provide tax subsidies transfers responsibility to the public, even those who do not invest in these companies, for the healthy bottom lines of these companies in lieu of good management. 

This kind of thinking is what led us to a lot of the major regulatory programs on waste.

 It used to be okay to dump and bury chemicals in the back forty, or allow asbestos to accumulate in piles in the center of Ambler, PA, or pipe wastes into the ocean off of New Jersey, or build taller smoke stacks to share the polluted off-gases with the rest of the public.

Spraying waste on the public, public tax subsidies for private interests, disregarding workers’ health problems remind me of some Pennsylvania history. 

In the mid nineteenth century, the logging industry moved into Pennsylvania in a major way and proceeded to cut down most of the usable forests in the Commonwealth. 

Then, with Pa’s natural resource of timber depleted, these companies moved on to other states, leaving the communities that grew with the economic bounty to wither just as coal company communities have been doing.

As Sean Ray wrote in the 9 October 2017 edition of the Titusville Herald, “Soon, there were very little trees left, and just as before, the lumber jacks packed up and moved on, leaving behind a myriad of ghost towns.”

Far from being caused by big government and big regulatory programs, the economic downturn in PA’s timber industry was due to reckless destruction of resources and the mindless pursuit of profits. 

What resulted from this environmental debacle were the creation of the PA Department of Forestry and forestry programs that successfully reforested the State.

Just as this government “bureaucracy” was created in response to the destruction of the environment and its economic usefulness, all of the major environmental regulatory programs in the United States were created after the facts of pollution destroying land—and people. 

We have the Federal and State Clean Air Acts because of environmental disasters-- one occurred right here in Pennsylvania-- killing 20 people in Donora in one afternoon. 

We have the Toxic Substances Control Act because of a monumental disaster in India; yet, we have had a number of serious chemical spills throughout the years. 

Environmental laws and regulations do affect costs and thereby profits, but without these controls the environmental record of industries-- at least some of them-- would revert to pre-1970 behaviors. 

Because many industries understand money as their prime objective, withdrawing requirements means some of these companies could then cut their costs, i.e. environmental control costs.  

And who is left holding the bag and doling out repair and regeneration money-- the public.  Don’t tax the companies; just tax the public. Government by and for the people is really government by and for the powerful.

Dr. Richard Kaplan is an Adjunct Professor at Arcadia University in Glenside, PA, a volunteer for PennEnvironment and a retired pharmaceutical environmental executive; from Fort Washington, he can be contacted by email at rnmnk@aol.com.

(Note: Send comments on this op-ed to: PaEnviroDigest@gmail.com.)

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[Posted: October 11, 2019]

10/14/2019