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Beebe: More environmental inspectors needed for Fayetteville Shale activity Thursday, Nov 29, 2007 By Jason Wiest Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Arkansas likely will hire more environmental inspectors to monitor natural gas drilling activity in the rapidly developing Fayetteville Shale play, Gov. Mike Beebe said Wednesday. Environmentalists showed lawmakers pictures of polluted water, erosion and environmental damage in the area Tuesday and urged them to support hiring more inspectors. "That's probably going to have to be done," Beebe told reporters after speaking to the Arkansas Farm Bureau's 73rd annual convention Wednesday. "There's so much more activity that there's a greater need for more personnel in that arena to be able to address any potential environmental impact of the shale." However, Beebe said he would not call a special session to seek additional funding for hiring inspectors. Any budget increases for the state Department of Environmental Quality to increase personnel would have to be approved during the 2009 regular legislative session, the governor said. Until then, the agency probably will cross-train some employees to do inspections or change some employees' job description on a short-term basis to help fill the gap, both Beebe and ADEQ Director Teresa Marks said. Andy Cheshier, chairman of Citizens Against Resource Exploitation, said Beebe's support was encouraging, especially after what Cheshier thought was a negative reaction from legislators Tuesday. "They seem very hostile to us regular people," Cheshier said. "It's like they ... give you 10 minutes (to address the committee) but they'll let the (oil and gas) producers talk for an hour." Cheshier said he felt like many legislators opposed increasing the state's number of inspectors. At a legislative Joint Performance Review Committee hearing Tuesday, Rep. Daryl Pace, R-Siloam Springs, told Marks she did not need more inspectors. Rep. Ray Kidd, D-Jonesboro, added he was confident in the department's abilities and that negative drilling incidents were rare compared to all the things done correctly by oil and gas companies in the shale. A spokesman for SEECO Inc., a subsidiary of Southwestern Energy Co., said Tuesday he was not proud of some of the examples in the pictures environmentalists presented to the panel. "We're not perfect, but more importantly, we work hard to get it right, make it better and change the way we do our business so it doesn't occur again," SEECO Senior Vice President John Thaeler said. On Wednesday, he said it was hard for his company to take any position on whether the state should increase the number of inspectors that monitor drilling activities. "The state regulatory bodies have done an excellent job at working in cooperation with industry to monitor activity in the Fayetteville Shale play," Thaeler said. "They, along with the state Legislature, would know best what number of inspectors and additional inspectors would be required to maintain that level of vigilance." |
