"Company hopes to find gas in Upper Bucks"

By Amanda Cregan, Intelligencer, May 23, 2010:

New permits have given a gas drilling company a way in. Nockamixon officials and environmentalists are taking more legal steps to keep them out.


Big rigs could be rolling into Nockamixon anytime now.

A drilling company has renewed its efforts to start exploratory drilling for natural gas in Upper Bucks, a move that has brought local officials and environmental advocates out in force.

Last month, Arbor Resources renewed their annual state Department of Environmental Protection permit to drill at a property along Beaver Run Road in Nockamixon.

And at the same time, it attained permission from the Delaware River Basin Commission, a regulatory arm of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York that oversees the river and its watershed, to skirt the agency's rules on operational gas drilling because it is only doing exploratory drilling.

The Michigan-based company plans to use the site to discover if there is in fact a significant amount of natural gas hidden deep below the rock in our region.

On Tuesday, however, Nockamixon supervisors and The Delaware Riverkeeper Network fired back, filing an appeal with the Environmental Hearing Board in Harrisburg over the DEP permit.

On Friday, the township and the Riverkeeper filed an appeal with the DRBC, challenging the agency's decision to allow exploratory drilling within the Delaware River watershed.

"It's not acceptable. These agencies are supposed to stand for the protection of the environment and the municipalities, and they're not doing that. So, we as citizens have to protect ourselves," said Riverkeeper head Maya van Rossum.

The exploratory-drilling allowance created a loophole, allowing the drillers to set up shop, she said.

"It's a known and carefully crafted slippery slope," she said.

The Riverkeeper and local officials argue that Rapp Creek, which sits adjacent to the proposed drilling site, will likely be harmed, along with the watershed and the Upper Bucks community's groundwater.

Arbor is also violating Nockamixon's current zoning by placing a well on a non-industrial zoned property, they argue.

It's about respect, says Supervisor Chairwoman Nancy Janyszeski.

"I think that it's always been an expectation that they're going to drill, and our goal is that they drill responsibly," she said. "We have rights. Don't just snub your noses at us like we don't exist. This is our home. We live here."

An attorney for Arbor Resources declined to comment.

Nearly 250 homeowners in Nockamixon - about 19 percent of the township's nearly 1,300 homes - have signed leases. Residents received upfront cash and a promise of payment should the rock below their properties yield gas.

The gas well that the company hopes to use for exploratory drilling sits on a mostly wooded 100 acres that Cabot Industries owns on Beaver Run Road.

As opposed to operational drilling, exploratory drilling does not involve hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," which mixes the company's secret recipe of chemicals with an estimated 4.5 million gallons of water to flush the natural gas from deep below the Earth's surface.

Rossum hopes it won't be too late to stop the drillers from moving into Nockamixon.

"With both the DRBC and DEP making these decisions on the record, we are very fearful Arbor is going to take advantage of the situation, and rush in and start drilling before these issues are resolved."

As Nockamixon and the Riverkeeper network fight these latest developments, the township is still tied up in litigation against Arbor.

The two sides are awaiting a decision from a Bucks County Court of Common Pleas judge on Nockamixon's appeal to last year's zoning hearing board decision, which ruled that the state's Oil and Gas Act trumped local ordinances.

There is not yet a timeline for a ruling from the Environmental Hearing Board regarding the DEP appeal, the DRBC's process of appeal or for the appeal filed in Bucks County Court, said Nockamixon Township's attorney Jordan Yeager.

Nockamixon has been battling Arbor Resources since the DEP issued its first drilling permit in the township in 2007. . . .