U. S. Department of Energy is going to let states regulate hydraulic fracking

What the Department of Energy’s shale gas advisory board didn’t say in its interim report in August was just as important as what it said, panel members told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday.

Namely, the report doesn’t get into the question of whether the federal government needs to step in and begin regulating hydraulic fracturing.

“We didn’t say the deck chairs need to be shuffled around,” said Kathleen McGinty, a member of the advisory board and a senior vice president of Weston Solutions in Pennsylvania. “There was nothing that led us to the glaring conclusion that there was an actor missing from the scene. … The states are doing a good job. We don’t make recommendations that a different entity ought to , though we do make recommendations more needs to be done.”

Pressed further, board member Stephen Holditch, a professor at Texas A&M University, told the senators that “local control is really the best way to go.”

more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65139.html

Period.

And once there are several sets of regulation on the books the howl will go out for the lowest common denominator. Here's how it will work:

Let's say New York puts in stringent regulations
Then lets say Pennsylvania puts in regulations that allow all sorts of questionable fracking methods and materials but accompany it will some sort of assessment and enforcement system so its not good, but not horrible.
Then West Virginia puts in regulations allowing raw sewage to be used as the fracking material and allows no inspection by either Government or outside groups, and then sends out the State Police to ensure that no one questions the regulations.

Then what you will get is Republicans in New York and Pennsylvania howling that West Virginia, with its more progressive regulatory structure, is eating their dinner by producing gas that the people of their good state are not allowed to access - and they will use this to weaken every law in every state - heading for the lowest common denominator.

This is why the clown that acts as one of West Virginia's Senators and the clown we elected as Governor yesterday are so bad for the state and the country. Both of them will do all they can to encourage gas drilling and fracking and neither of them will give a rat's ass what it does to the water table or the people who use that water.

favor that.

So begins the race to the bottom.

and poisons wells in New York?