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Pennsylvania Fracking Law Opens Up Drilling On College Campuses
PolygamousRanchKid writes with this news from MotherJones: "Last year, when Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett suggested offsetting college tuition fees by leasing parts of state-owned college campuses to natural gas drillers, more than a few Pennsylvanians were left blinking and rubbing their eyes. But it was no idle threat: After quietly moving through the state Senate and House, this week the governor signed into law a bill that opens up 14 of the state's public universities to fracking, oil drilling, and coal mining on campus. Environmentalists and educators are concerned that fracking and other resource exploitation on campus could leave students directly exposed to harms like explosions, water contamination, and air pollution."
We're not opening up the college campuses to resource exploitation. We're expanding our engineering program and our geology program. New fields of study to include Mine Safety Engineer, Gas Well Engineer, Resource Geology, Mining and Mineral Engineering, and more! Internships right on campus! Sorry for the coal dust on the windows.
I can imagine how this conversation went.
"So, does anyone have any suggestions how we can fuck over the country's college students some more?"
"I don't know, we're already indebting them for most of their adult lives. How do you top that?"
"Hey, I have an idea, but it's kinda far-fetched..."
If I recall correctly isn't PA the state with the ever burning coal mine fire? I think it was called Centrailia or something. Let's open up college campuses to mining as well. I'm sure putting a mine on the same property as drunk frat boys is a brilliant plan.
This isn't the worst thing to happen on Pennsyvalnia college grounds.
State University systems can own thousands of acres of land not actually being used as campus land. A large portion of the University of Texas's income comes from leases operated on UT-owned land. In fact, there is an entire entity solely dedicated to handing this for UT: University Lands. It's unlikely that Pennsylvania is looking to lease Campus Commons areas. More likely they are simply making it possible for unused land owned by the system to bring in funds for the State University System.
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Coal mining is completely different to seam gas extraction.
Coal mining removes the coal.
Seam gas extraction leaves the coal seam in-situ.
Seam gas extraction extracts water that is within the seam, this water contains gas, the gas is separated from the water.
The size of an exploration pad is nothing more than 30x30m, including all the equipment.
The size of a production drill pad for CSG extraction is nothing more than 2 basketball courts.
At least, this is how it works in my part of the world... and seriously, in Central Queensland (Australia) we have boat loads of the stuff.
Does it go on forever?
No, son. "Any land owned by the University system" is not considered part of the "campus".
I won't argue what "campus" means but, the bill never mentions "campus". here' the text of the bill:
Senate Bill 367 (P.N. 2349) – This bill establishes the Indigenous Mineral Resource Development Act, allowing the Department of General Services to make and execute contracts or leases for the mining or removal of coal, oil, natural gas, coal bed methane and limestone found in or beneath land owned by the state or state system of higher education.
In other words, the article from Mother Jones was entirely misleading making people think of gas rigs next to dormitories when, in reality, the bill opened up all state lands pending government approval. Typical Mother Jones scare tactics.
The best part is, once the extraction is done, you have two new basketball courts!
FYI, "fracking" has been verifiably linked to flammable tap water. It's no surprise that this had to be pushed quietly through system, because there's a lot of very good reasons fracking shouldn't be done at all, especially near populated areas.
And just for fun: here's a fun video showing what can happen when you live too close to it.
I agree - the same is true here in Colorado, where land owned by Colorado State (a land-grant university) has been open to drilling for several years already. The university owns lots of land, often many tens of miles away from the main campus, for such things as experimental farms, aircraft hangars and radar sites. Most of them have been drilled using the "horizontal" approach, so no equipment directly on site. I know this because I work on one of the remote sites, and was around when they drilled some 500 feet away from my building. The oil company folks came over and explained that we may hear odd sounds when they did the frakking (I didn't). The university has made quite a bit of money off the wells, which translated to no student fee increases for a couple of years (this year was an exception, though).
If you read the acutal law, SB 367, it does not authorize natural gas drilling on college campuses. In fact it specifically exempts them, as well as all state nature preserves:
It does, however, permit the state to make a right of way through a state college to reach natural gas wells located some place else, but I guess "Pennsylvania Fracking Law Opens Up Roads on College Campuses" doesn't sound nearly as sentational.