Strip Mine by University of Kentucky
Two Pennsylvania legislators who have taken money from--and
enthusiastically supported--the natural gas industry have teamed up to now
praise coal.
State Sen. Gene Yaw (R-Williamsport), chair of the
Environmental Resource and Energy Committee, and Rep. Tim Solobay (D-Canonsburg,
Pa.) are co-chairs of the newly-established Coal Caucus.
It's a strange move on their part, since both have praised
natural gas as the economic future of Pennsylvania.
Yaw, in his first run for the Senate in 2008 accepted only
$3,700 in campaign contributions from energy companies; the largest were $1,000
donations from Anadarko Petroleum and Chesapeake Energy. In his first
re-election campaign in 2012, he received no contributions from the shale gas
industry. He didn't need it. Yaw leased 148 acres in Lycoming County to
Anadarko, and was receiving royalty checks.
In March 2013, now in his second term, Yaw introduced
two bills to expand natural gas usage in the state. When asked by WNEP-TV about
a possible conflict-of-interest, Yaw replied he had signed his lease with
Anadarko in 2006 before he was elected to the Senate; but in 2011, he renewed
that lease for an additional five years.
"Conflict of interest is the most easily-thrown-about
concept when you can't think of anything else to say," said
Yaw. However, Eric Epstein of Rock the Capital, a
watchdog on state government, countered
Yaw's cavalier attitude. "You can not simultaneously promote and
regulate an industry, if you have the ability to pass and sponsor legislation
that will increase your quarterly dividend."
A week later, outside a meeting closed to the public
to discuss issues related to Anadarko's request to drill in Loyalsock State
Forest, Jim Hamill of WNEP-TV again asked Yaw to discuss his ties to the shale
drilling industry and about his possible conflict of interest. "No, and I don't
know what part of N-O you don't understand. Last week we talked
and you turned it into a totally negative article, something that should have
never been done," Yaw testily replied.
Among
Democrats, Solobay received the most money from Big Energy, $60,325, according
to Common Cause.
Act
13, which pretends to regulate the natural gas industry and the recently-developed
process of hydraulic horizontal fracturing, better known as fracking, was
signed on Feb. 14, 2012, by an enthusiastic Gov. Tom Corbett. It was a
Valentine's Day gift to Big Energy. The law is largely based upon language
created by the conservative lobbying group, American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC), and supported by Big
Energy, the Republican-controlled state legislature, Gov. Corbett (who had
taken more than $1.8 million in campaign donations from Big Energy), and the state's conservative Chambers of
Commerce. It was largely opposed by the Legislature's Democrats, environmentalists,
and persons in the health professions.
Fourteen
months after Act 13 was passed, and with citizen protests increasing against
fracking, Solobay declared he was frustrated "when people spin and challenge
every bit of information and action out there with the sky-is-falling mentality."
He said the protestors "enjoy spreading fear and uneducated comments," and
erroneously stated,
"A majority of the negative voices out there are paid activists [who] do
nothing but spread false rumors and scare people." He could easily have been
talking about Big Energy, which has developed a massive public relations
campaign that is adept at use of the mass media to spin the benefits of
fracking while overlooking its health and environmental effects.
Some
of those "false rumors" Solobay had claimed were spread by environmentalists might
have come from the coal industry, which had been the primary provider of fuel
for more than a century before being challenged first by nuclear energy and
then by natural gas when horizontal fracking allowed gas extraction and distribution to became profitable
in the Marcellus Shale.
Because
of all the praise and attention state legislators were giving the gas industry
and the attacks upon coal, coal executives had to believe they were now
relegated to the role of an orphan in a Dickens novel. But they still had some
influence, and that influence soon became apparent.
Never
missing opportunities to seize votes and political contributions--and possibly
realizing that the Marcellus Shale was becoming less profitable--Yaw and Solobay
spun around and founded the Coal Caucus. First praising the gas drillers, Yaw
then gushed,
" Since the Industrial Revolution,
coal has also fueled our economy having created hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Collaboratively, we can change the dynamic of coal as an energy resource. . . . This Coal Caucus will serve as a champion
for increased investment in coal and coal-driven technology."
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