PennFuture Targets Entire Oil & Gas Industry in PA

| | | |

Anti-drilling “environmental” group PennFuture’s newly appointed President and CEO George Jugovic, formerly the PA Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) southwest regional director, is wasting no time in going after the oil and gas industry. Current DEP Secretary Michael Krancer got the drilling industry to stop using municipal sewage treatment plants to process Marcellus drilling wastewater without so much as an edict or lawsuit. Conventional (non-Marcellus) gas drillers have now come under the scrutiny by PennFuture and other anti-drilling groups. They want conventional drillers to stop processing their drilling wastewater via treatment plants that discharge into rivers and waterways.

A former top environmental official said Pennsylvania’s successful efforts to keep Marcellus Shale wastewater away from drinking-water supplies should be extended to all other oil and gas drillers.

"It’s the same industry. It is the same contaminants. And the goal should be the same," said George Jugovic Jr., who was formerly the Department of Environmental Protection’s southwest regional director. He’s now president of PennFuture, an environmental group.

An Associated Press analysis of state data found that in the second half of 2011 about 1.86 million barrels — or about 78 million gallons — of drilling wastewater from conventional oil and gas wells were still being sent to treatment plants that discharge into rivers.

The core issue is whether a problem in waterways has been solved, or if more needs to be done.*

*GoErie.com/AP (Apr 16, 2012) – Expert says all state oil, gas waste needs treatment

One Comment