CHARLESTON — Acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin reaffirmed Wednesday that he has no intention of calling a special session to deal with Marcellus shale regulation, but did request an additional $2 million from general revenue for more inspectors.

Tomblin said he is proud of several pieces of the legislation that did pass, but was disappointed in the failure to pass the Marcellus regulation bill that came out of the Senate. In the meantime, Tomblin announced at a news conference Wednesday that he was requesting members of the Legislature to set aside $2 million from the taxpayer-funded general revenue fund to pay for new inspectors.

Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman, said the appropriation would be enough to train and hire an additional 8 to 10 inspectors.

The economic benefit of the gas industry and the potential environmental impact, Tomblin said, must be balanced.

“It’s a resource we must tap and take advantage of, but when we do so, we must do so in a way that is environmentally responsible,” Tomblin said. “If we do it correctly, we can create jobs while still protecting our environment.”

Tomblin said that given the divide between the House and Senate, he doesn’t “believe a special session is worth it at this time.” He added that a special session in absence of an agreement between the two houses would be a waste of taxpayer money.

“I will see to it that the Marcellus shale development will be regulated in a reasonable manner by our Department of Environmental Protection,” Tomblin said. “The DEP has wide authority to establish the needed regulations and I’m confident that the gas in the Marcellus shale will be developed in an environmentally friendly manner.”

Huffman said the nine-member group that drafted the DEP’s regulation recommendation was likely too small and lacked the diversity to deal with the complex nature of the Marcellus shale development.

“That was a very limited group, we got very little input from them,” Huffman said. “We’ll need to expand beyond those folks to get a much broader range of perspectives. This is a complex issue and a lot different people have a lot of different interests.”

Tomblin’s call for the additional funding, Huffman said, would allow the DEP to move quickly in using their existing authority to cover as much as they can in regard to horizontal Marcellus drillers.

“The most important thing we can do in the short-term is get more of a presence in the area where the majority of the Marcellus shale drilling is taking place,” Huffman said.

He said the DEP effort will not expand or create new regulations, but merely increase their presence through existing measures. Because there is not an actual rule or regulation change, Huffman said conventional drillers will likely not notice a difference in practice, while horizontal drillers will only notice a slight change.

“Over time, over the course of maybe the next year, they may see us beef up some of the reporting requirements or things like that, but I don’t think they’re going to see a significant amount of difference,”

Huffman said. “Hopefully what they will see is in seven or eight months from now, they’ll see us around a little more often.”

Huffman added that he is looking to what can be done in the future, but also believed the DEP had a good bill this year.

“We just don’t think it was given proper consideration from the Legislature and we think there were too many interest groups that wanted to hang their own interests on it and it weighted it down and crashed it,” Huffman said.

Julie Archer, of the West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organizations and the West Virginia Citizens Action Group, said her organizations continue to be disappointed by lawmakers’ inaction on the Marcellus shale development.

“We appreciate the governor wants to give more money to the DEP to get more boots on the ground — that’s really important,” Archer said.

“There are some things they can do through rulemaking to address some of the environmental concerns, but there is a limit to how much they can do that.”

Concerns about pit waste burial and the close proximity drillers can set up wells by homes are other concerns. Archer also said one important measure that will not be addressed is the requirement that drillers consult with landowners before drilling on their property.

“We’ve been waiting several years just to try to get that. We don’t feel like that is asking too much,” Archer said. “There are some companies doing that voluntarily, but there’s not enough of that happening. Unless someone makes them do it they just aren’t going to.”

Surface owner representatives weren’t the only groups concerned. Carol Warren of the West Virginia Council of Churches and the Ohio Valley Environmental Council said citizens need immediate protection from the adverse health effects that may result from the natural gas industry.

“We’re very concerned about the health effects that are showing up already in Northern West Virginia, people with rashes, people who are having vomiting episodes,” Warren said. “We know that there is a wide range of neurological damage people can suffer either because of polluted water or air emissions that settle down in the area where we are.”

Warren added that “there’s plenty of blame to go around” for not passing the bill and expressed surprise and dismay that no regulations were passed after a long process of petitioning the Legislature for more regulation. She said she had hoped West Virginia could get in front of the issue by addressing concerns before there was a catastrophe. If it takes another year, Warren said, lawmakers will only see more evidence of damage done by drillers.

“I don’t think we’ve heard a lot about the health effects here in West Virginia because they are just beginning,” Warren said. “I think if there’s a whole other year of this, we are going to have dozens and dozens of people coming down with health issues.”

Dave McMahon, co-founder of WV-SORO, said the expansion of DEP authority will only go so far. He predicts there will be court challenges to existing statutes, but the process of making it to the Supreme Court will take too long.

“It’s going to be fought in court if the Legislature doesn’t act, but it’s going to be fought one person at a time and it’s going to take a long time to get that case up to the Supreme Court.” McMahon said. “If something isn’t done now, a lot of surface owners are going to get run over by the industry.”

Corky DeMarco, executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association, said he believes the governor’s motion is a good start.

“There’s no sense in bringing people in and trying to rehash this complex issue if you don’t have a deal put together,” DeMarco said. “I think the majority of the regulatory processes that needs to happen can be done within the current framework of the DEP.”

DeMarco said the industry had concern with well-spacing and other elements of the bill. He said the DEP should be able to regulate the industry under current authority until next year when legislators would get another shot at regulations in their regular session.

In the meantime, he said other states in the Marcellus play are also busy rewriting regulations for what is essentially a new technology in the area.

“Everybody is going through a process of reviewing their regulations for the simple reason that this is different than what has gone on in the Appalachian Basin in the past, especially in West Virginia and Pennsylvania,” DeMarco said. “We drilled shallow wells in shallow formations and we’ve done it for well over 175 years. This is different. It’s horizontal and some of these horizontal legs go thousands and thousands of feet. That’s different than poking a vertical hole down a thousand or two thousand feet.”

DeMarco said the House version of the bill didn’t involve enough input from the industry.

“I think it was more a product of folks who aren’t necessarily as informed about the industry as those of us in the industry and/or those of us who regulate the industry right now,” DeMarco said. “It was an attempt on the partisan folks who probably should have involved more knowledgeable people in their process.”

Gary Zuckett, executive director of the WV-CAG said the bill is too important not deal with immediately.

“At this point, the ball is in the court of the House and Senate to see if they can come to an agreement and bring that to the governor to pass something,” Zuckett said. “It doesn’t seem the governor is going to hold the legislatures feet to the fire to get a reasonable Marcellus bill passed.”

Zuckett said the burden of funding for additional inspectors shouldn’t be placed on the taxpayers. One version of the Marcellus regulations introduced this year would have provided funding for inspection and permitting programs through permitting fees, and not general revenue.

“I personally don’t think the taxpayers, out of the general revenue, should have to pay to regulate a billion dollar industry that should be paying for its own permit fees and regulation,” Zuckett said. “I would like to see the DEP put a halt on new permits until they get new inspectors in the field.”

In the meantime, without regulations, Zuckett said, he anticipates more problems from the industry.

“We are probably going to have more water contamination and aggravation to landowners,” Zuckett said. “There is still no requirement that drillers sit down and negotiate with surface owners about where they will put wells, pipelines and other things. Drillers basically have carte blanche when it comes to the surface owners’ property. We think that is unfair.

— E-mail: tkuykendall@register-herald.com