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April 13, 2013
By John Hayes / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
To some 850,000 trout anglers expected to hit Pennsylvania's
lakes and streams for today's statewide opening of trout season, that's
like asking the value of a day out fishing with your
dad.
But for industries that extract Pennsylvania's most abundant natural resource
from 83,000 miles of streams and rivers, nearly 4,000 lakes and an estimated 80
trillion gallons hidden underground, water is free. Billions of gallons per day
are taken at no cost, much of it never to be returned to the citizens who own
it.
With a $9 million budget shortfall threatening to hit the state Fish and
Boat Commission in 2017, executive director John Arway said he's "searching high
and low" for alternative funding to hold afloat an agency financed mostly by
anglers and boaters. One idea with possible legal precedent and tentative=0
bipartisan support in Harrisburg is imposing a new fee for the
"consumptive use" of water, with revenues going to Fish and Boat and the state
Department of Environmental Protection.
Consumptive use refers specifically to water that is extracted by
industry and permanently removed from the environment, Mr. Arway
said.
"When people drink water or take a shower, it's returned through the
sewage system," he said. "When farmers irrigate fields it drains back into the
ground. The Pennsylvania Constitution says we, the citizens, own the water. Some
of these companies take it out of the environment, use it for free and it's
gone, never returned to Pennsylvania's
environment."
The bottled water industry, for instance, pays nothing to remove it from
the state's waterways. It treats and packages water and ship
s much of it out of
the state. The Marcellus Shale industry also extracts water for free. The
process of hydraulic fracturing pumps much of it so far below the water table it
is rendered forever unusable. Other industries make similar permanent use of
water.
"That's our water they're taking for free," Mr. Arway said. "They're
stealing the resource from us, and that makes me
mad."
In the American West, most land ownership includes water rights. But in
Eastern states, including Penn
sylvania, rules dating to English common law leave
most flowing water and the aquatic life that inhabits it in a trust owned by the
citizens of the state.
Under a 1940s state law, dredging companies that remove sand and gravel
from the riverbeds of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers compensate the state with revenues
shared by Fish and Boat and DEP, agencies with roles in managing those
waterways. Mr. Arway sees the law as precedent for a new regulation that would
compensate the state for the permanent extraction of water.
The idea has conceptual support from Republicans and Democrats in
Harrisburg.
Submitted in March with bipartisan co-sponsorship, State Senate Resolution 39
would allocate money to study the issue and recommend an as-yet undetermined fee
structure for the permanent use and degradation of
water.
"Billions of gallons of water are either never returned to Pennsylvania's water cycle or returned in a degraded
condition each day, and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania receives no compensation for either the
consumptive use or degradation of water," said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Richard
Alloway, R-Adams, Franklin and York counties, in a written statement. The
resolution is in committee.
The bottled water industry supports regulation of the industrial use of
water. But Chris Hogan of the International Bottled Water Association said the
trade group opposes the kind of state-levied fees suggested by Mr.
Arway.
"The consumptive use of water for bottled water is arguably one of the
highest and most appropriate consumptive uses of water in a product, since it
quite literally is then directly consumed by
consumers," Mr. Hogan
said.
In 2008, the bottled water association supported ratification of the
Great Lakes Compact, which addresses commercial water extraction from the
Great Lakes Basin, including Pennsylvania. But more than a dozen
Pennsylvania-based bottlers extract water from outside the Lake Erie Basin. Most, including the Nestle brand's
Poland Springs Water, KD Service's Great Oak Spring Water Co., Pure Elements H2O
and 3 Springs Water, draw from the Susquehanna and Delaware river
drainages.
In 2009, the state denied the request of a bottled water startup company
to drain more than 100,000 gallons a day from the Laurel Hill Creek watershed in
Somerset
County. The DEP said the
withdrawal would significantly diminish the flow of the popular trout stream and
its tributaries and cause environmental damage.
With DEP oversight of its operations in Pennsylvania, water bottlers are subject to
permit and inspection fees and taxes. Considering that much of the product is
returned to the environment from which it came, Mr. Hogan said the bo
ttled water
industry is actually a "net importer of water into states in the
region."
The association's national water policy statement supports government
involvement in long-term sustainable water usage. It opposes, however, "targeted
state and federal fees placed on its members' operations and products, but is
happy to review broad-based proposed user fees to determine whether or not they
are equitable for all, including the bottled water industry," said Mr.
Hogan.
The Marcellus S
hale industry moves water from the surface to deep
underground. Each drilling site uses 3 million to 5 million gallons, almost all
of it during the hydraulic fracturing stage. Steve Forde, a spokesman for the
Marcellus Shale Coalition, said that in 2011 in Pennsylvania drilling operations used 8
million to 10 million gallons of water per day, among the least used by water
consuming industries.
A 2011 U.S. Geological Survey report said fracking operations accounted
for 0.1 percent of 9.5 billion gallons of water extracted daily from the state.
Mr. Forde said new cost-saving technologies developed in the past three years
enable operators to reuse water used in fracking, reducing the industry's need
for water.
"There's a good business case to be made for reducing water withdrawal.
Transporting it to the well and then disposing of it -- it's expensive," he
said. "In our business, hydraulic fracturing is where water is utilized, and the
truth is we're not using as much water as we did just a few years
ago."
A DEP spokesman said the resolution, which would provide new revenue to
the department, is under review. Mr. Arway said water usage revenues would
provide a
partial remedy for Fish and Boat, which runs on a $55 million annual
budget mostly derived from license and permit fees and a federal excise tax on
fishing and boating gear and fuel. He said the $9 million shortfall will hit in
four years in the form of employee pension obligations and growing
infrastructure
expenses.
John Hayes: 412-263-1991, jhayes@post-gazette.com.
R. Martin Coordinator www.PaForestCoalition.o
rg
Mission: Good Stewardship of our Public Lands
Caring for what God has created
Republicans for Environmental Protectionwww.REPamerica.org
Mission: Good Stewardship of our Public Lands
Caring for what God has created
Republicans for Environmental Protectionwww.REPamerica.org
