Last week the rumor mill was hot with speculation that on Friday the Delaware River Basin Commission would release a draft document outlining their proposal to ban hydraulic fracturing in the Delaware River Basin permanently (see DRBC Secretly Working on Permanent Delaware Basin Frack Ban). Fortunately, that didn’t happen. But don’t start celebrating just yet. The rumors are still swirling. Apart from a single Associated Press article (run in dozens of newspapers), there has been no other coverage of this big news. Why is that? Why is mainstream media so uncurious about a potential DRBC frack ban? The person doing the real work on this story is MDN friend Tom Shepstone. Writing on his blog site Natural Gas Now on Saturday, Tom did a masterful job of chronicling the foibles of the DRBC–and he laid out how we got to where we are now, with a potential permanent ban. In a nutshell, landowners in Wayne County, PA sued to reverse a grievous error, challenging the DRBC’s authority to regulate fracking in the basin. That lawsuit, and the very real possibility that a decision will go against the DRBC, prompted radical environmental groups like THE Delaware Riverkeeper to push for a DRBC permanent ban. The effort for a permanent ban, which (for now) would only affect Wayne and Pike counties in PA, went into overdrive a few months ago. Here’s Tom’s excellent article, which will bring you up to speed and prepare you for when the news of a permanent ban eventually does break–possibly this week at the DRBC regularly scheduled meeting…
