In the near future, I will introduce legislation that will directly address a serious issue impacting thousands of property owners and natural gas leaseholders across Pennsylvania.
My legislation is simple; it says the PA Department of Environmental Protection shall disclose the full and complete results (including raw data and documentation) of any tests conducted on a landowner or leaseholder’s property. This information shall be made available at no cost within five (5) business days of a written request by the landowner or leaseholder.
According to an article in the New York Times on November 2, 2012:
“In a deposition, a scientist for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection testified that her laboratory tested for a range of metals but reported results for only some of them because the department’s oil and gas division had not requested results from the full range of tests.
The scientist, Taru Upadhyay, the technical director of the department’s Bureau of Laboratories, said the metals found in the water sample but not reported to either the oil and gas division or to the homeowner who requested the tests, included copper, nickel, zinc and titanium, all of which may damage the health of people exposed to them, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.”
The full article, “Pennsylvania Report Left Out Data on Poisons in Water Near Gas Site” can be found at: http://nyti.ms/SB2qA1
My legislation would simply allow landowners and leaseholders to get all the facts and data about what DEP finds as a result of their testing; nothing more, nothing less. There is no justification whatsoever for disclosing anything less than 100% of the information about potentially toxic substances in the air and water of Pennsylvanians.
The DEP has used exemptions in the Open Records Law to deny requests for testing data. I was personally denied testing data for air quality tests conducted when a non-profit health clinic in my legislative district was shut down because exposure to unidentified chemicals caused employees to become ill on multiple occasions. The DEP continues to refuse to release the testing data because they claim there is a greater interest in withholding the data than in releasing it to the public. This is fundamentally wrong.
My legislation would make clear that Pennsylvanians have an absolute right to know what the DEP discovers from testing on their property and that information cannot be withheld through any bureaucratic maneuver.
If the DEP is unwilling to provide the full truth to the citizens of Pennsylvania by choice, the Legislature should reaffirm our commitment to openness and transparency to the people by ensuring the DEP does the right thing by law.
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