Authorizing game wardens to inspect natural-gas drilling sites makes sense

Game and Fish Commission may pay for inspectors for gas-drilling sites

 There is a legitimate argument for the Game and Fish Commission to provide inspectors for the land being damaged by the drilling for natural gas in Arkansas.
Game and Fish could legitimately be the "one-stop shopping" for redress of environmental crimes that many people have begged for. Reporting environmental destruction to the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Forest Service, the Department of the Interior, the state Department of Environmental Quality, the FBI, the CIA, the State Police, a county Sheriff's Office, a local police department or local code-enforcement department, a local tree-protection administrator, a local stormwater engineer or any other agency can be frustrating.
Serious criminal mistreatment of the environment reported to all will often result in referral to some of the others. No single agency appears to be authorized to take action to protection delicate, sensitive environmental areas. Soil, water, air and living things native to such places are treated as disposable or of no economic value by all.
Sure, the people at those agencies may agree with the complainant. But they all disclaim having any authority to act except in very unusual circumstances.
You can be arrested by a wildlife officer for killing more than eight squirrels in a day in Arkansas. But a person who destroys thousands of acres of squirrel habitat, those magnificent hardwood forests that our tourism people love to photograph and tout worldwide, and face not even a wrist-slapping.
A bit of extraining training in geology and biology can bring a well-trained wildlife officer up to speed in a hurry. And those wildlife officers already know how to write tickets and make arrests. Give them the authority if you want to take their money! And pay them well!

For decades, I have advocated authorizing the Commission's wildlife enforcement officers to ticket, or arrest as necessary, anyone found to be polluting the water or air and anyone destroying wildlife habitat anywhere in the state. Giving Game and Fish the authority to REALLY protect the resources of the state is the right thing to do. And the time is NOW.

Share gas-lease cash, Beebe urges agency
BY SETH BLOMELEY
Posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/National/232777
Game and Fish Commission may pay for inspectors for gas-drilling sites

Gov. Mike Beebe said Tuesday that the Game and Fish Commission should share some of the $29.5-million from a natural-gas lease to help fund environmental inspectors needed to regulate the increased drilling in Arkansas.
“Game and Fish is very sensitive to the fact that these are resources that don’t just belong to them but that belong to all the people in Arkansas,” Beebe told reporters. “We’ve got environmentally sensitive areas that need protection.”
Amendment 35 of the state constitution, which set up the commission, puts the commission in charge of its revenue and gives little authority to the governor or the Legislature, Beebe and other state officials said.
Nonetheless, the commission is willing to turn over some of the money to the Oil and Gas Commission and to the Department of Environmental Quality to help guard against potentially unscrupulous gas drillers, said Loren Hitchcock, Game and Fish Commission deputy director.
“The wildlife would benefit,” Hitchcock said. “We don’t want to see a mountain stream running into a river get polluted from some type of drilling.”
The commission expects to get a wire transfer of the entire amount from Chesapeake Energy Corp. of Oklahoma City later this week, he said. The lease is for five years and after that could be renegotiated. The commission also will receive 20 percent royalties of gas produced.
Hitchcock said he wasn’t sure of the amount of the projected royalty revenue.
One of the two areas of commission land covered by the lease is Gulf Mountain in Van Buren County, $ 28. 3 million involving nearly 4, 000 acres. This is in the Fayetteville Shale formation where increased drilling for gas in the state has occurred.
The second, in the Petit Jean River Wildlife Management Area, totals $ 1. 2 million for 7, 500 net acres. That land is considered to be part of the Arkoma basin, where gas has been produced for years.
Beebe said some sort of “interagency agreement” would be the mechanism to transfer the money but that it’s possible legislation would be involved during the 2009 regular session of the General Assembly, which starts in January.
Some legislators, including Sen. Steve Faris, D-Central, a close ally with incoming Senate President Pro Tempore Bob Johnson, D-Bigelow, have in recent years expressed concerns about possible windfalls from natural gas leases that the commission may receive. Faris has talked about somehow diverting the money to other agencies.
Such talk makes Beebe confident the commission will agree to share.
“They are not stupid,” Beebe said of the commissioners. “They know that constitutional independence only goes so far. The Legislature still has to appropriate the money. The Legislature has to appropriate every dime of this money. [The commission ] can collect it all they want, but if they want to spend it, the Legislature still has to appropriate it.”
He said he would support a constitutional amendment to give the Legislature more authority on spending commission dollars but emphasized that would only be a last resort.
“My first option is to convince [the commission ] to do it,” Beebe said.
Beebe, a Democrat, has appointed two of the seven commissioners. The others were appointed by former Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican. Commissioners serve a seven-year term and cannot be reappointed, said Beebe spokesman Matt De-Cample.
“There is no one on the commission that doesn’t want to get along with the governor’s office and certainly Gov. Beebe,” Hitchcock said. “I don’t see us getting off track where we can’t get something worked out.”
Faris said Beebe “is on the right track” but more should be expected of the commission. He said the drafters of Amendment 35, which was passed in 1944, didn’t envision such a “unprecedented windfall” for the commission.
“I don’t think the amendment gives the right to keep one dime,” Faris said. “They ought to do the right thing and turn every bit over to the state. They don’t even need that money. It just shows the audacity of the Game and Fish Commission that they think they can keep that money and dole it out as they see fit.”
He pointed out that the commission has a dedicated source of revenue from the one-eighth percentage point sales tax for conservation in Amendment 75 passed by voters in 1996.
He said needs in health care and highways are more worthy areas in which to spend the lease money.
In recent years, the Legislature has had mixed success in dealing with windfalls.
In 2000, it deadlocked over how to spend the expected $ 60 million a year in tobacco settlement payments. Later that year the voters approved a funding plan put forth by Huckabee. In 2007, lawmakers spent most of a $ 1 billion surplus on public school facilities.
Faris, who has clashed with the commission over the years, said if the commission doesn’t turn over the money the Legislature should appropriate it somewhere else and that the commission should sue if it thinks it is entitled to it. He also said the Legislature could refer a constitutional amendment for the people to vote on in 2010 to redirect the money.
Hitchcock said the commission has a “list of projects” on which to spend the money.
Examples he gave: work on the White River to improve fishing, the Bayou Meto irrigation project in southeast Arkansas, tracts along the Saline River to buy for wildlife areas, bonds to pay off early, and refurbishing Camp Ouachita at Perryville.
Beebe said it’s possible other agencies could share in the money in addition to the Oil and Gas Commission and the Department of Environmental Quality.
Teresa Marks, director of environmental quality, said the shale exploration has been “putting a strain on our resources.” She said she has 16 water inspectors to handle natural gas wells but that they inspect other water-related things such as storm-water draining.
“We would like to have at least two additional inspectors and an inspector supervisor and an enforcement administrator,” Marks said. “We’re probably talking $ 300, 000 to $ 500, 000 [a year ].”
She said the additional employees would only handle natural gas issues. Currently, her agency responds to about two to three natural gas complaints a week and can’t do many random checks, she said.
Through 2003, natural gas and oil permits with her agency averaged about 182 a year. But in 2007 there were 1, 024, she said.
The extra money would cover salaries and computers, office space and vehicles the additional staff would need as well as pay for water studies.
Marks said she just heard about the revenue-sharing idea from Game and Fish Commission officials.
“This is a real pleasant surprise for us,” she said.
Larry Bengal, director of the Oil and Gas Commission, said his agency has seven natural gas well inspectors and needs three more. He said he can fund that with additional permit fees his agency has received from the increased drilling.
But he said his agency could use more money to plug abandoned oil and gas wells and clean up the area around them. These are wells that were owned by entities that have gone bankrupt and the wells pose possible risks to water supplies.
“We have over 600 wells that require plugging for which there are no viable operators,” Bengal said.
That’s only what’s known. For instance, recently abandoned oil wells were discovered on property where the El Dorado School District is building a new high school, he said.
Fewer than 50 of the 600 are gas wells. The rest are oil wells, he said.
Bengal said he hasn’t asked the Game and Fish Commission for a specific amount but that it averages about $ 7, 000 to plug a well, which would add up to $ 4. 2 million for all 600 wells.
Richard Weiss, director of the Department of Finance and Administration, said he’s not aware of an agency giving money to others. Typically there is a contract or agreement where one agency agrees to provide a service to another in exchange for money.
He said he hasn’t talked to the governor about the idea but didn’t view the agreement being talked about as a giveaway by the Game and Fish Commission.
“Making sure water is clean and pure, that would certainly be a benefit [the Game and Fish Commission ] would get,” Weiss said.
Some environmental advocates have expressed concern that the drilling could harm the commission land, but Hitchcock said the commission has taken serious its charge to keep the land in good shape. He said that’s one reason the negotiation over the lease took about a year.
He said the land being leased has deer, turkey, bear, quail, rabbits, squirrels, and bass in streams.
Up until now, the state hasn’t reaped as much from shale leases as had been initially anticipated.
The Game and Fish Commission has received more than $ 3 million, the Heritage Commission about $ 20, 000, and the Highway and Transportation Department about $ 23, 000.
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