A state commission is being handed the enormous responsibility of determining how, when and where natural gas drillers will work in this state, potentially deciding key questions involving billions of dollars.
Members of that commission must certainly be subject to the state’s ethics laws.
The N.C. Ethics Commission ended some uncertainty regarding that question last week in ruling that the N.C. Mining and Energy Commission must follow the state’s ethics rules. This often-called “fracking commission” was created by the General Assembly this year and packed with members favorable to the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing as a means of drilling for natural gas,
North Carolina is believed to hold 1.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and oil, most of it beneath the Piedmont counties of Lee, Moore and Chatham. Rather than wait for a thorough examination of the fracking process, which critics say endangers water and air quality and which so disrupts local geology that it has been blamed for some minor earthquakes, the General Assembly approved the practice this year. Then it told its new commission to come up with rules to drill safely.
The legislation loaded the commission with seats set aside for fracking supporters, and legislative leaders went a step further by filling at least one so-called environmentalist slot with another fracking support. In short, the commission looks like a rubber stamp for “drill, baby drill” regardless of the dangers.
Given the possibility that some members of the fracking commission may participate in the sale of drilling rights, it was absolutely essential that the Ethics Commission place the mining and energy commissioners under its purview.
A great deal is at stake for North Carolinians. Our groundwater could be fouled. Some argue that the process will deplete our water supply. There are concerns about air quality, disruption to rural communities, the path over which pipelines are installed and damage to our roads.
With all of this at stake, it is absolutely essential that North Carolinians know just who on the fracking commission could profit from its decisions.
http://www.journalnow.com/opinion/editorials/article_86558f02-303d-11e2-a1e7-0019bb30f31a.html
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