Environmentalists and regulators want the bill, but some oil and gas representatives think it’s unnecessary.
House Bill 4513 would call for oil and gas drillers to submit
records of water taken out, as well as fluid discharged into, West
Virginia waterways. The bill’s proponents say tougher
reporting requirements could avoid a repeat of the massive fish kill on Dunkard
Creek last fall. Though the fish kill was caused by golden algae, many believe
nearby oil and gas operations could have contributed to brackish water.
Delegate Tim Manchin (D-Marion) is the bill’s lead sponsor.
He says the bill is the result of two years of study by the joint standing
committee on water resources.
“What protections are there for sensitive streams?” he
asked. “In other words, if they go in and they need to withdraw two-and-a-half million
gallons from a stream back up in the headwaters, what protections are there for
that stream and the environment? And what we really learned at that point in
time, is that there’s very little, if any.”
The Department of Environmental Protection supports the
bill. James Martin of the DEP’s Office of Oil and Gas says the agency already
has some reporting requirements, but the bill would implement several more.
“The bill, specifically I guess under Paragraph A, those
first few items there, that’s part of the permit addendum, where we’re looking
at type of the source and that part of it,” Martin said. “I think some other
parts of the bill are additional to addendum.”
But the bill’s stakeholders disagree about whether the bill
is necessary. Nick Casey stood to represent EQT, one of the companies involved
in drilling the Marcellus shale.
“EQT took a look at this when the joint committee was
working on it and there were various meetings—I don’t think they had quorum,”
he said. “But at that meeting, EQT had representatives there who took some
energy to communicate and talk about the information that was in the bill. And EQT
found it to be acceptable.
“It’s consistent with the kind of information that they
currently accumulate and gather for their own internal purposes. So they didn’t
consider this to be an additional burden and from a policy perspective, they didn’t
have any problem with it, so they find it to be acceptable.”
Ann Bradley of the Independent Oil and Gas Association maintains that the bill
is redundant, when viewed alongside the DEP’s current reporting requirements.
“You’ve already heard that a lot of this information is
already required by DEP under their existing authority,” she said. “They’re to
be commended because they’ve used their regulatory authority, they’ve used
guidance, they’ve used permit application form amendments to respond to this
industry that’s developing very rapidly and making technological changes
rapidly. And they’ve been innovative in using their existing authority to address
those changes. Our position is that we think the legislation is unnecessary.”
The committee passed the bill, but it still has to pass
through the Energy, Industry and Mining committee before being read on the
Senate floor.
After Monday’s floor session, the Labor Committee held a meeting
at the back of the Senate chamber to discuss House Bill 4359. The bill would affect
whether or not public construction jobs have to hire local labor. Committee
vice-chairman Bob Williams (D-Taylor) explains the bill.
“Well, we currently require any construction job over a
million dollars to hire 75 percent of its labor from West Virginia labor forces
that are within 75 miles of the borders of West Virginia: that’s where the pool
had to come from,” Williams said. “What we did was we reduced that from one
million to $500,000 and we reduced the circle of potential employees from 75
miles to 50 miles.”
The bill eventually passed the committee, but Sen. Clark
Barnes (R-Randolph) had some concerns. The bill takes out a stipulation that the
“local labor market” includes counties that border West
Virginia, and he worried whether that would actually
spur job creation.
“So when we are actually changing the qualifications for
some of these beneficial contracts to go actually farther outside the state,”
he said. “Our language before said if it was a county that bordered West
Virginia, that it actually touched West
Virginia that it was included in that local labor
market. And now, even though we have reduced the mileage from 75 to 50, we are
no longer saying that county has to border. And what I’m concerned about is
that we are potentially passing this bill to protect labor organizations rather
than West Virginia labor.”
The bill next goes to the Finance Committee.