Ecology & Environment (E & E), the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) contractor whose membership in the lobbying group Independent Oil and Gas Association (IOGA) of New York set off alarm bells, “clarified” its relationship with the organization last week.

In a letter released April 24, E & E asserted that it was never a member of IOGA, though it had previously paid an employee’s membership fees “in order to attend IOGANY’s Conferences and receive its newsletter to be kept apprised of new technical developments in the industry and develop industry contacts.” The environmental consultant castigated IOGA for not obtaining authorization to name Ecology & Environment in its letter to Andrew Cuomo pushing to move forward with fracking in New York State. E & E also declared that it had directed its employee to terminate his IOGA membership.

According to the April 24 letter, “E & E’s nationwide policy has been to not take any position on fracking and only provide objective environmental consulting;” however, the company has a financial interest in New York’s approving the practice evinced in corporate financial reports and past work for oil and gas companies. E & E has also been criticized for its overly optimistic prediction of fracking’s economic effects written on contract for the DEC and further has ties to a now-defunct fracking research institute at the University at Buffalo that incorrectly reported that the incidence of major environmental citations had declined in Pennsylvania.

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In a letter dated April 22, 2013, Brad Gill, the director of the Independent Oil and Gas Association (IOGA) of New York urged Governor Andrew Cuomo to “embrace the expansion of responsible natural gas development” on behalf of IOGA of New York’s members. Appended to the letter was a list of these members. Among these members was Ecology & Environment, Inc., a global environmental and engineering consulting firm headquartered in Western New York.

In 2011, Ecology & Environment (E&E) was at the center of one of the many controversies surrounding New York’s still unissued Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS), upon which the decision whether to allow fracking in New York is to be based. Ecology & Environment was the recipient of a $223,000 contract from the Department of Environmental Conservation to study the potential effects of hydrofracking on New York’s economy and quality of life. That study, which made rosy predictions about fracking’s economic impacts, came under scrutiny due to E&E’s other contract work for oil and gas companies. At the time, the DEC defended their choice, saying that E&E had “demonstrated it has the needed expertise and capabilities to perform services D.E.C. required” and that “E&E’s client list played no role in D.E.C.’s decision to engage them.”

Now appears that, in addition to doing contract work for gas industry clients, E&E is also a member of a group that lobbies for fracking to be legalized. IOGA of New York, which describes itself as a trade organization whose membership is open to “producers, operators, engineers, consultants, landowners, and allied businesses and individuals,” has spent over $600,000 on lobbying since 2008, most of which has been around the fracking issue. The organization does not list its membership on its website, and until now E&E’s affiliation with the group was not known.

Depending on when Ecology & Environment joined the group (an IOGA spokesman told Gannett’s Jon Campbell that E&E was indeed a member), their contribution to the government study upon which New York’s fracking decision will be made is a profound conflict of interest. If the company was paying dues to a group that describes its mission on tax filings as “promot[ing] the common interests of oil and gas producers” at the same time it was studying the effect fracking would have on New York communities for state regulators, Ecology & Environment’s objectivity on the issue is highly suspect.

Though the DEC stood by their choice to hire E&E during the initial controversy around the company, the Department has so far not commented on E&E’s affiliation with IOGA. Governor Cuomo’s refrain has been that his decision on fracking will be dictated by science, but has the science itself been dictated by the industry?

Pennsylvania Secretary of Environmental Protection Michael Krancer announced last week that he was leaving the agency to lead the energy, petrochemical, and natural resources practice at Philadelphia-based law firm Blank Rome LLP, where he was a partner from 1992 to 1999.

Krancer’s administration of the Department of Environmental Protection during the fracking boom was mired with controversy, characterized as overly friendly to the natural gas industry and hostile to regulation and enforcement. His return to Blank Rome, which lobbies for natural gas clients and was a member of the Marcellus Shale Coalition until 2013, makes him the fifth DEP secretary since the agency was created to take a job connected to the oil and gas industry.

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On the heels of Public Accountability Initiative’s extensive report on the revolving door between fracking regulators and the natural gas industry in Pennsylvania, Gannett’s Jon Campbell reports that Steven Russo, deputy secretary and general counsel of New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation, is leaving the agency to lead the environmental practice at the law firm Greenberg Traurig.

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The Pennsylvania Environmental Council is an organization that the Public Accountability Initiative first touched upon in our recent report on the revolving door between Pennsylvania’s environmental regulators and the natural gas industry. The group is perhaps the most prominent voice on environmental issues in the state of Pennsylvania and often provides representatives to Commonwealth boards, commissions, and panels. Its mission statement reads:

The Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC) protects and restores the natural and built environments through innovation, collaboration, education and advocacy. PEC believes in the value of partnerships with the private sector, government, communities and individuals to improve the quality of life for all Pennsylvanians.

On the fracking issue, PEC has positioned itself as a moderate, calling itself “the voice of reason.” It has called for a severance tax in Pennsylvania, but supports drilling in the Marcellus asserting “[i]t is widely considered that the Marculle [sic] Shale play offers an abundant fuel to help bridge the gap between today’s energy portfolio and a future supply that reflects both a reduced carbon footprint and reduce dependence on foregin [sic] sources of energy.”

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New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation has chosen Robert Jacobi, a University at Buffalo geologist with ties to the natural gas industry, to study the link between fracking and earthquakes, a DEC spokeswoman told Bloomberg‘s Jim Esftathiou, Jr. Jacobi, who is a senior advisor to gas driller EQT Production and who runs a geoscience consultancy, was a co-director of the University at Buffalo’s short-lived Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI), which was closed in November 2012 following a controversy over an industry-friendly study that downplayed fracking’s risks. “Jacobi has a vast range of experience that makes his expertise useful,” the DEC said in a statement e-mailed to Bloomberg. Jacobi’s experience includes a long career with the fossil fuel industry, to which he still has ties, and recently reviewing the report that led to SRSI’s closure.

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Opponents of the proposed minimum wage increase in New York State have tapped a notorious tobacco and fast food lobbyist to help them make their case. One of Berman’s industry front groups, the Employment Policies Institute, published an op-ed in the Buffalo News last week that argued that an increase in the minimum wage would lead to job losses. I have an op-ed in today’s Buffalo News that puts that op-ed in proper context:
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According to a new filing, the Campaign to Fix the Debt, whose leadership includes lobbyists Vic Fazio and Jim McCrery, has hired lobbyists of its own. A lobbying disclosure filing by Fix the Debt reveals that as of January 2, Cynthia S. Brown, Nathaniel Hoopes, and Elizabeth Wroe will be lobbying for the campaign “to educate on the need for a comprehensive plan to fix the US long term debt and deficits.”

The grassroots insurgency rings bells for Social Security cuts in Davos

As we know, though the Campaign to Fix the Debt holds itself out to be budget hawks, its leaders’ companies lobby for corporate tax breaks and pocket billions in defense contracts while they attack the social safety net. Recent stories and reports have highlighted the way that the Campaign to Fix the Debt advocates for the private interests of the large finance houses, defense contractors, and other corporate interests that comprise its leadership.

But who are the lobbyists’ lobbyists?
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This past March, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection faced controversy when an e-mail leaked to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette revealed a new agency policy requiring any Marcellus Shale permitting or enforcement action to be approved by DEP executives and cleared by Secretary of Environmental Protection Michael Krancer. Under the new policy even notices of violation, previously issued by field inspectors or regional DEP offices, were required to be cleared by agency brass in Harrisburg. The policy, decried by environmental groups statewide, raised the specter of political interference in Pennsylvania’s regulation of fracking. Former DEP Secretary John Hanger called the new policy “exceptionally unwise” and said that it could “do nothing but crater public confidence in inspections and oversight of the industry.”

For Krancer, an appointee of Governor Tom Corbett, a decrease in the number of violations found by his department would help vindicate his vigorous stance against the federal government regulating fracking, which he feels should be left to state agencies. Indeed, in a Congressional hearing Krancer quoted a report from the University at Buffalo’s Shale Resources and Society Institute that (incorrectly) concluded that the incidence of major environmental incidents was decreasing based on the number of notices of violation issued by the DEP.

After a spate of bad press and at the insistence of 42 environmental and conservation, faith-based organizations, and businesses, the DEP rescinded the pre-approval policy a little more than a month after the directive issued.

Last month, another e-mail obtained by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette exposed another new DEP policy requiring reviews of notifications by top agency officials, this time for determinations that water has been contaminated by fracking in the Marcellus Shale. Previously, based on the results of laboratory testing of samples collected by water specialists, DEP district offices would send determination letters to residents and property owners whose water was affected. Under the new policy, contamination determinations must first be sent to the DEP headquarters in Harrisburg for review by Deputy Secretary for Oil and Gas Management Scott Perry and Michael Krancer.

Much like the rescinded policy from this spring, this directive requiring the approval of DEP Secretary Krancer over notifications of water contamination introduces the possibility of administrative interference in what should be a matter of test results and the plain language of the law. An e-mail from Deputy Secretary for Oil and Gas Management Perry indicates that only positive determinations of contamination from drilling operations are to be reviewed at the top level, though he asks to be apprised of negative determinations that “may generate media interest.”

The new notification policy came on the heels of meetings between DEP officials and Range Resources to contest water contamination letters sent to property owners whose supplies were contaminated by methane, likely due to gas drilling. According to Marcellus Money, a project of Common Cause PA and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania, Range Resources executives and its political action committee have contributed $46,754.77 to Gov. Tom Corbett, who appointed Krancer, since 2009.

On top of the policy requiring top-level approval of contamination notifications, the DEP is facing scrutiny over the content of notification letters. Pennsylvania State Representative Jesse White has called for state and federal agencies to investigate the DEP for “alleged fraud and misconduct” after a DEP employee revealed in a deposition that the Office of Oil and Gas Management directed the Bureau of Laboratories to omit a number of heavy metals, some known carcinogens, and volatile organic compounds associated with fracking from water test reports. At the direction of the Office of Oil and Gas Management, the results of DEP’s laboratory tests for lithium, cobalt, chromium, boron and titanium as well as volatile organic compounds are witheld from reports to the oil and gas division and property owners.

These policies cast a shadow on the Department of Environmental Protection’s mission to “protect Pennsylvania’s air, land and water from pollution and to provide for the health and safety of its citizens through a cleaner environment.” They seem to show a calculated manipulation of information, at the risk of Pennsylvania residents, in order to make fracking in the Marcellus Shale seem safer and its regulation by the DEP more effective. The Office of Oil and Gas Management can reduce the apparent number of contamination instances by limiting the number of hazardous chemicals reported on water tests by the Bureau of Laboratories and by requiring all letters confirming water contamination to be approved by Secretary of Oil and Gas Management Scott Perry and Secretary of Environmental Protection Michael Krancer.

Neither Perry nor Krancer are chemists with the scientific experience one would expect necessary to determine whether fracking has contaminated a water supply. Rather, both are attorneys. Prior to heading the DEP, Krancer was general counsel for the energy company Exelon and previous to that he was a litigator for Blank Rome LLP, a law firm and lobbying group that represents a number of natural gas clients. Perry was the attorney for the DEP’s oil and gas division before being selected to head it.

Considering the serious health consequences possible from exposure to contaminated water, the apparent interference of top DEP administrators in public notifications about water contamination is cause for alarm. Michael Krancer is a staunch defender of his agency’s ability to effectively regulate the gas industry and Scott Perry has gone on record saying: “There has never been any evidence of fracking ever causing direct contamination of fresh groundwater in Pennsylvania or anywhere else.” But as long as Perry and Krancer are playing politics with water contamination notifications, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has effectively ceded its authority to make such determinations.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition has canceled its series of economic reports formerly issued through Pennsylvania State University when no Penn State faculty would agree to put their name on it. The reports, primarily authored by the frackademic Timothy Considine and widely cited in the campaign against a gas severance tax in Pennsylvania, painted a rosy picture of the economic benefits of Pennsylvania’s hydrofracking boom, though jobs numbers have not reflected Considine’s predictions. Bloomberg reported today that gas drilling has actually created and supported fewer than half of the jobs predicted in Considine’s 2009 report. His 2010 and 2011 updates of the original study were even farther off than that. Penn State retracted the 2009 report when the Responsible Drilling Alliance revealed that Considine and Seth Blumsack, his co-author, had not disclosed that the Marcellus Shale Coalition had commissioned and paid for it. The report was reissued with a notice of its funding, which was also carried on the 2010 and 2011 updates. The three studies cost the Marcellus Shale Coalition $146,000.

According to William Easterling, dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, the study cannot be researched or published under the school’s imprimatur if no full-time faculty will associate with it. Among the people who were asked to take part in the study and declined are Seth Blumsack, co-author of the 2009 study; Michael Arthur, co-director of Penn State’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research; and Terry Engelder, the geologist and industry cheerleader who discovered the perhaps 141 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Marcellus.

“I would speculate that some of them have just made a calculated decision that getting out there and being involved in this report isn’t the best thing for the way they would like to be seen by the outside world.” Easterling told Bloomberg‘s Jim Efstathiou.

Frackademic backlash

The Penn State development comes in the context of a greater crackdown on gas industry influence over the science that shapes public policy around hydrofracking, a phenomenon that has come to be known as frackademia. In August, the University of Texas named a panel to review a February study from its Energy Institute that PAI revealed may have been influenced by author Chip Groat’s financial interest in Plains Exploration and Production, a fracking company operating in the area the report studied (though it should be noted that the scope of the review may not be as wide as UT originally made it out to be).

Last month, the trustees of the State University of New York unanimously called for the University at Buffalo to report to them on the role of the gas industry in the founding, funding, and staffing of the university’s Shale Resources and Society Institute and in the issuance of its controversial first report on environmental violations in the Pennsylvania Marcellus. That study, which was cited in Congressional testimony by Pennsylvania Secretary of Environmental Protection Michael Krancer, had a number of problems identified by PAI, including the fact that two of its central conclusions were not supported by its data, entire passages had been copied verbatim from a previous report, and that the data itself was of dubious value due to possible political interference and misreporting of violations by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

The report on SRSI’s creation, which the university has completed, has not been made public, though a SUNY representative says that once it has been reviewed it will be. Meanwhile, the UB administration is standing behind the report. In a speech to the UB faculty senate, provost Charles Zukoski attributed the problems with the study to “wording errors” and insisted that “there have been no concerns regarding the report that have been raised by the relevant scientific community.”

Despite the UB administration’s confidence in the SRSI study’s rigor, the frackademic backlash is mounting. UB CLEAR, a group formed to insist on transparency in the institute, collected more than 600 signatures in support as well as a letter signed by 83 University at Buffalo faculty and staff. The Middle States Commission on Higher Eduction is considering a request to look into Penn State’s accreditation over the Considine reports. All of this spells out bad press for the universities involved as the public becomes more aware of the policy implications of industry-influenced science when it comes to a practice as dangerous as hydrofracking.