Regulations DO NOT prevent pollution.
Regulations ENABLE POLLUTION!
Regulators are trained and employed to ISSUE PERMITS –for pollution!
Then they asses monitory fines for violations and spills – if we are lucky!!
As we have seen in PA, many spills go unreported, and those that are, often suffer no enforcement action, or if so, it’s just a token wrist-slap.
The purpose of the permit is not to prevent pollution,
it is to regulate how much pollution occurs at any give time.
If this activity were not permitted,
thus making the associated regulations obsolete,
there would be no pollution for these industries.
Therefore, these permits and associated regulations
are CAUSING pollution.
The FACT is that this industry has a HORRIBLE safety record,
which has left a toxic legacy everywhere it has gone.
The only way to stop the violations and stop the environmental
destruction is by PROHIBITION,
which is not in the charter of government “regulators”.
Regulators can only adjust the rate of the valve.
They don’t know how to shut it off entirely.
Prohibition is not in the job description of a regulator.
Prohibition would make the regulator’s jobs unnecessary.
“source regrettably unknown”
All taxes discourage the acvitity that is taxed. Sometimes this is desirable- taxing smoking discourages smoking particularly by young people. Sometimes it is simply necessary. Taxing purchases at department stores reduces the amount of “shopping therepy” but without those tax revenues the poor would not eat and children would remain ignorant. Natural gas is no different. If Pennsylvania taxes natural gas production some rigs will head off to Ohio and elsewhere. Even some existing wells will be shut as the drop in net revenue will make it no longer economic to continue producing. Therefore it is a good idea to be smart about where and how to tax natural gas production. Just as it would not be sensible to tax all consumables at the rates reserved for whiskey and tobacco so it is not sensible to tax all natural gas at the same rate per cubic foot regardless of the nuisance and hazard generated. A tax on the water used and disposed of in fracking could generate higher reveues, allow greater natural gas production and lower annoyance and hazard as compared to the proposed severence taxes on the value of natural gas produced.