Gazette.Net: Marylanders living above Marcellus shale wait on advisory commission study
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A mile under Marshall Stacy’s Garrett County Christmas tree farm, quite a bit of money lurks.

Natural gas, hibernating deep in the shale rock is what Stacy hopes will be his family’s long-term financial reward. But even though the state next week will undertake a study into the benefits and drawbacks of drilling into the Marcellus shale, Stacy knows any payday is probably a ways off.

The commission, which will meet for the first time Thursday, is tasked with making recommendations to the legislature for the 2012 session. But it is not required to issue a final report on the safety and best practices of drilling into the bedrock until August 2014.

Drilling in Maryland has been heavily debated for the past year as energy companies and landowners argue that natural gas is a relatively safe resource, more environmentally friendly than coal or oil and prime for extraction. Some lawmakers and environmentalists, on the other hand, say it is unclear how much cleaner natural gas extraction is, extracting it can contaminate drinking water and the risks generally are too great to begin tapping the earth in western parts of the state without further study.

In 2008, before a gas company backed out and permitting for drilling into the shale came to a standstill in Maryland, Stacy and 500 other Garrett County landowners had a contract to lease their land at $2,300 an acre for five years, plus a 16 percent royalty from any gas extracted from wells on their property during a five-year period. He estimates that just the acreage charge would have generated $750,000 on his 373 acres. The entire group of property owners was looking at a $30 million windfall for the use of their land in the first year alone, Stacy said.

“This was found money,” he said. “It was like I was walking through the woods, and there was a big, giant chest of $100 bills.”

To reach the gas in Marcellus shale, a layer of sedimentary rock that is named for a village in central New York and stretches from that state through Pennsylvania, western Maryland, West Virginia and western Virginia, energy companies have to use hydraulic fracturing, which requires that they drill into the earth and bust through the rock with a high-pressure combination of water and chemicals.

But the procedure, known as fracking, has gone awry in other areas, contaminating ground water and causing well fires in some Pennsylvania communities where drilling the shale became popular and profitable a few years ago.

In May, Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D) announced the state would sue Chesapeake Energy Corp. under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Clean Water Act, after a well owned by the drilling company in Pennsylvania accidentally released thousands of gallons of fracking fluids, which subsequently flowed into a tributary of the Susquehanna River.

Environmentalists have said the chemicals used in the drilling process could be carcinogenic, while proponents of drilling say household chemicals such as clog removers are just as dangerous.

Environmental arguments and shale-drilling accidents in other places prompted Del. Heather R. Mizeur (D-Dist. 20) of Takoma Park to sponsor legislation that would have put a two-year halt to permitting and drilling in Maryland.

Her initiative did not survive the General Assembly session, but was scooped up by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who created the commission that will help policymakers determine if drilling can be done in the state without adverse effects on public health, safety, the environment and natural resources.

“There’s just so many pieces to this,” said, Mizeur, a member of the commission. “That’s why I think we wanted to have this pause and take the time out to think about this. You can’t just look at one element of this work in isolation.”

There’s also a movement to consider a severance tax on the gas pumped from wells in Maryland, Mizeur said.

“There has not [been] the kind of in-depth analysis with a full review of the information, and I don’t know that our commission is going to be able to do that either,” she said. “I think we’re going to be limited in our time, talent [and] expertise.”

In Somerset County, Pa., a jurisdiction of 80,000 people, two ski resorts, three state parks and little else, Marcellus shale drilling is set to boom in the next few years.

The county, which has fewer than 100 operational wells pumping gas to the surface, has studied the potential effects of shale drilling. Kerri Butner, comprehensive plan coordinator for the Somerset government, said county leaders have looked at environmental issues, such the disposal of water that returns to the surface after the fracking process.

But as pressing of an issues is the effect a new industry and the temporary workers who will come with it could have on small communities with limited housing and employment resources, Butner said.

Somerset County, with an economy based largely on tourism, similar to Allegany and Garrett counties in Maryland, is not poised to compete with the salaries large energy companies can pay, she said.

“It’s a double-edge sword, because the industry is bringing these higher-paid jobs,” she said. “There’s a trickle-down effect that some of our local employers are having a hard time finding people because they can’t pay at the same rate that the big gas companies” can.

Those temporary workers, often brought in from areas where drilling is common, such as Oklahoma and Texas, also eat up the county’s hotel and temporary housing, leaving little room for ski resort patrons and other visitors, Butner said.

Jeffery Silka, executive director for the Somerset County Economic Development Council, said the workers’ stay in town is temporary — but the economic benefit of the drilling will last for years after the gas wells are tapped, as residents reap royalties on the gas coming from their properties.

“Most people think that the Marcellus shale [gas is only collected during] the drilling. The fracking of the well is the most visible,” he said. “The sustained impact is going to be on maintaining the wells. The jobs are going to be here as the drilling comes.”

In Somerset, where drilling has yet to rival that taking place in some other Pennsylvania counties, the economic benefit hasn’t stretched beyond individuals who have leased their land, Silka said.

The benefit “was more personal,” he said. “The money went to the individual landowners, so there wasn’t a big boon for the economy.”

It’s that economic development that Stacy says will help farmers and landowners in Western Maryland maintain their property instead of selling it off in pieces or developing it to make ends meet.

“This money would go into those people’s hands that have never had much money and are really just scrapping along,” he said.

With new technology that forces well drillers to triple-layer their wells with steel and concrete and other precautions, Stacy argued that drilling is safe and there are greater risks of contaminating ground-water wells through use of household cleaning products, which he says aren’t too different from the composition of fracking chemicals.

“We have enough energy in this gas reserve to be completely energy independent,” he said. “We can say, to the rest of the world, ‘Sorry, we’re not interested in your oil. We’ve got our gas. Our gas is much better for the environment.’”

sbreitenbach@gazette.net