Five Years After Pennsylvania’s Landmark Fracking Report, Its Public Health Goals Remain Largely Unmet, Groups Say

Five years after a Pennsylvania grand jury made eight recommendations to protect public health and the environment from fracking, the state has largely failed to follow through, four environmental groups said on the anniversary of the report.

On Wednesday, the groups—Earthworks, Protect PT, the Center for Coalfield Justice and Environmental Health Project—called for Gov. Josh Shapiro and legislators to do more.

Shapiro was the attorney general who convened the 43rd grand jury, but since he was elected governor in 2022, the state has not increased setback distances between natural gas well pads and homes to the extent the report prescribed, has continued to allow fracking companies to withhold the identities of chemicals deemed proprietary and has failed to set a comprehensive health response to the effect of living near drilling, the groups said.

Although there has been some progress on increasing regulation of gathering lines—smaller pipelines that link well pads to main transmission lines—and the administration has tightened requirements on air pollution from well pads, Shapiro and the state legislature have made “little to no progress” toward achieving five of the grand jury’s eight goals, the groups said.

“It took a lot of courage for many of us to tell our stories to the grand jury,” said Jodi Borello, a community organizer in Washington County for the nonprofit Center for Coalfield Justice, who was one of the people who testified to the grand jury. “Many of us were fearful of the repercussions. We hoped that our testimony and the eight recommendations would immediately help others, yet here we are today.”

Borello, speaking during a webinar to announce the review, said the recommendations were the result of “painful” personal experiences of air and water pollution, heavy truck traffic and industrial development that still affect residents living near fracking operations in Pennsylvania, the second-biggest U.S. natural gas producer after Texas.

Manuel Bonder, a spokesman for Shapiro, said the legislature has rejected the Democratic governor’s calls to implement the grand jury recommendations. Pennsylvania’s General Assembly is split, with a Republican-controlled Senate and a slim majority for Democrats in the House. 

“While the legislature has failed to act, Governor Shapiro has continued the fight to make progress on these critical issues, including requiring natural gas operators to disclose chemicals used in drilling, implementing controls on methane emissions, and collaborating with a leading natural gas operator to conduct the most intensive study of unconventional gas wells in the nation,” Bonder said in a statement.

On the disclosure of fracking chemicals, the environmental groups noted that operators now post the identity of some chemicals online, a result of Shapiro administration rules. But they noted that chemicals declared as proprietary by their manufacturers are still not disclosed, representing only partial progress on that goal from the grand jury report.

The Shapiro administration announced that chemical manufacturer Chemstream said it would not publicly withhold the names of chemicals it had deemed proprietary. 

Since fracking for natural gas in Pennsylvania took off in the mid-2000s, the industry has been accused of contaminating drinking water aquifers with fracking chemicals, polluting air in residential areas and failing to publicly disclose the identities of some chemicals that are linked to health harms.

Patrick Henderson, a spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a trade group that represents the Pennsylvania industry, said in response to the review that “the politicized grand jury report was factually and legally inaccurate and a disservice to the citizens of the Commonwealth.”

“The extreme activists leading today’s webinar exhibit the same jarring lack of understanding as the grand jury as to how this industry operates and is regulated,” he said in a statement. “The facts speak for themselves: Pennsylvania’s shale gas industry is among the most regulated and highest performing industries in the Commonwealth. The industry’s employees live in the communities in which they operate – and take great pride in the work they do safely each day for the benefit of their fellow Pennsylvanians.”

The environmental groups said the state has not met the grand jury’s goal of increasing the required minimum distance between new well pads and homes to 2,500 feet from the current 500, though the Shapiro administration said it has supported legislation to raise that minimum. The critics dismissed a November 2023 agreement between Shapiro and natural gas producer CNX for it to voluntarily increase the setback to 600 feet, saying it would not come close to protecting nearby residents.

The collaborative study Shapiro’s spokesman flagged was also done with CNX. When the company released the initial results of its monitoring effort with the state last year, it declared its natural gas development “poses no public health risks.” Multiple academic studies about gas development in Pennsylvania and elsewhere have found a variety of health risks, including a University of Pittsburgh study commissioned by the state that found heightened risks of a rare cancer among children living within a mile of a gas well. 

Campaigners’ efforts to increase the setback distance between homes and wells were most recently impeded by Pennsylvania’s Environmental Quality Board, which in April delayed action on a petition by advocates that would require the Department of Environmental Protection to formally investigate whether to increase the distance.

SB102, a Republican-sponsored bill that advanced out of a state Senate committee in May, would prevent any municipality that “unreasonably limits or prohibits” natural gas development from receiving proceeds from the state’s impact fee, a levy on gas drillers.

The environmental groups said Wednesday that they appreciated an increase in federal oversight of gathering lines, but noted that the grand jury called for regulation of all pipelines throughout the state.

The groups gave qualified praise for the administration’s efforts to shield communities from fracking air pollution, saying it was “moving in the right direction.” They also endorsed HB109, a Democrat-sponsored bill that would allow the state Department of Environmental Protection to deny permits for oil and gas development in environmental justice areas, based on cumulative environmental impacts.

But the groups said the administration has made “little or no progress” on more strictly regulating the transport of fracking waste. Some of it is toxic or radioactive, and has the potential to affect communities along truck or rail routes if spilled, the groups said.

“If you live near a site where waste is being dumped or transported, you are being affected,” said Gillian Graber, executive director of Protect PT, in the presentation. Her group advocates for people in Pennsylvania’s Westmoreland and Allegheny counties.

On the grand jury’s call for a comprehensive state response to the health effects of fracking, Graber said studies on the subject “have been ignored” by the Shapiro administration, which she said has made “little or no progress” on the issue. Bonder, Shapiro’s spokesman, said the Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, is considering “the potential for new regulations” that would allow the agency to approve the specific layout and siting of well pad structures, has expanded the number of staff with expertise in fracking and toxicology and improved its citizen complaint process related to oil and gas.

The groups also accused Shapiro of failing to close a “revolving door” of regulators who leave government to work in the oil and gas industry, reducing the chances that rules will be effectively enforced. That was addressed in a limited way in the governor’s agreement with CNX, in which the company promised not to hire DEP employees from regional offices overlapping with its operational areas for the first two years after they leave the agency.

The environmental groups said the administration has made little progress on the grand jury’s recommendation to give the state attorney general’s office the authority to originate prosecutions against the industry, rather than waiting for referrals from the DEP or district attorneys. 

Shapiro’s spokesman said the administration has implemented a new criminal referral protocol and enforcement strategy. Ultimately, giving the attorney general’s office more authority would require legislative action.

“There are already a number of other specialized areas, such as child predator and computer crimes, where the Attorney General’s Office has been given special jurisdiction,” the grand jury report noted five years ago. “It would be a straightforward matter to do the same here.”