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.

Financial interest in fracking

Although Ecology & Environment claims to be neutral on the fracking issue, the company stands to gain financially if it is allowed in New York. In its 2010 annual report, E & E wrote:

E & E’s management recognized early on that the oil and gas industry provided outstanding opportunities for commercial consulting contracts due to federal and state permitting requirements for new facilities.

In its most recent 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, E & E identifies “unconventional natural gas development” as a business area:

Recent advances in gas drilling techniques have opened “shale gas” reserves for development. E&E has positioned itself to respond to industry demands for permitting well development and take away pipelines required to move shale gas to market.

E & E’s 10-K from 2011 had the same language, followed by: “The company is currently working in the Marcellus and Barnett Shale Gas Reserves.”

Work that E & E has done for the oil and gas includes “play[ing] a key role in the development of El Paso Corporation’s 680-mile (1,094-km) Ruby Natural Gas Pipeline,” and reports supporting the permitting of the Williams Companies’ Transcontinental Pipeline that stretches from South Texas to New York City.

Ecology & Environment has also lent its name to a report by National Fuel Gas titled “Natural Gas: Nature’s Choice for Clean Energy,” providing technical review for a company booklet encouraging people to use more natural gas.

“Thin” economic analysis

E & E’s business serving the oil and gas industry aroused suspicions in 2011 when the company and the DEC released the Economic Assessment Report the company prepared to support the state’s Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) evaluating the potential impacts associated with permitting fracking.

The analysis, for which E & E was paid $223,000, predicted that fracking would add nearly 25,000 jobs and $1.7 billion in wages to New York State’s economy.

This forecast was criticized by the economists Jannette Barth, Edward Kokkelenberg, and Timothy Mount for relying too heavily on assumptions about the amount of gas produced and the lifespan of an average gas well, for glossing over negative economic effects from fracking such as reduced property values and decreased tourism revenue, and for overestimating tax revenue projections from fracking, among a litany of other concerns.

The group Food & Water Watch also issued a report that criticized E & E’s analysis and raised many of the same issues as Barth, Kokkelenberg, and Mount. Focusing on the fact that many shale gas workers in Pennsylvania come from out of state and the 30-year timescale of the E & E study, Food and Water Watch concluded that fracking would only add around 600 jobs to New York’s economy in the first 10 years of an average development scenario.

In the wake of this criticism, DEC Commissioner Joseph Martens tasked E & E with expanding their socioeconomic study in the areas where it was “a little thin.” According to Martens, this additional study has been completed, though details will not be available until the DEC releases the latest iteration of the regulatory review.

Ties to fracking institute at University at Buffalo

E & E also has ties to the now-defunct Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI) at the University at Buffalo. In May 2012, SRSI published a study that inaccurately downplayed the environmental risks from fracking – researchers either misread or misrepresented Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protections data, claiming that major environmental incidences declined from 2008 to 2011 when they actually increased – which led to an inquiry from the State University of New York Trustees and resulted in the Institute’s closure.

The Institute’s director and co-author of the study, John P Martin, was employed by Ecology & Environment as a senior advisor according to a presentation about fracking he made in Jakarta, Indonesia in February 2012. Martin also operates an energy consulting firm that “provides strategic planning, resource evaluation, project management and government/public relations services to the energy industry, academic institutions and governments.”

An Ecology & Environment employee was also a member of the five-person review panel that missed the error in arithmetic that led the SRSI authors to their incorrect conclusion. George Rusk, a regulatory specialist and vice president at E & E, was tasked with reviewing SRSI’s report and providing comments to its authors. Presumably neither Rusk nor the four other reviewers in his cohort noticed the report’s fatal math error as the study contained and relied on this flaw for its central conclusion both as originally published and in a revised version.

While Ecology and Environment maintains that its membership in the Independent Oil and Gas Association was misrepresented in the letter IOGA executive director Brad Gill sent to Governor Cuomo, the consulting firm has significant ties to the oil and gas industry as well as a stated financial interest in unconventional natural gas development. On top of this, E & E has a history of signing onto reports used to promote natural gas, all of which amounts to a substantial conflict of interest for a company hired to perform an objective study of fracking for New York’s environmental regulators.

Combined with the revelation that other contractors, URS Corporation and Alpha Geoscience, that worked on the fracking Environmental Impact Statement had similar affiliations with IOGA, and that the DEC hired Norse Energy and EQT consultant (and SRSI co-director with John Martin) Robert Jacobi to study fracking’s seismologic impact, Ecology & Environment’s conflicts raise serious questions about the independence and objectivity of New York’s fracking review.

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?

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.

Krancer’s photo from his lobbyist registration when he was an attorney at Exelon

Blank Rome, where Krancer will chair the energy, petrochemical, and natural resources practice, has close ties to the oil and gas industry. The firm describes itself as “uniquely positioned to counsel and represent shale oil and gas exploration, production, and mid-stream companies regarding all of their business needs,” and has represented a number of natural gas players at the federal level, including the Gas Technology Institute, GeoSpatial Holdings, and Shell. Blank Rome also lobbies for the Gas Technology Institute and the Gas Processors Association in Pennsylvania through its subsidiary, Blank Rome Government Relations.

In Pennsylvania, Blank Rome has a number of revolving door ties to Pennsylvania government. Mark Holman, one time chief of staff to former governor Tom Ridge, worked for Blank Rome Government Relations for eight years after his government job before joining Ridge’s lobbying firm Ridge Policy Group as a lobbyist for the Marcellus Shale Coalition. Another Ridge staffer, Glen Thomas, joined Blank Rome as a partner after four years chairing the state’s Public Utility Commission. Thomas now runs an energy consultancy called GT Consulting.

Krancer actually came to his public position from the energy industry. Before his DEP appointment, he was a judge on the state’s Environmental Hearing Board, which hears appeals from DEP actions, and prior to that he was an attorney for Exelon, an electric company that relies on natural gas. Before his appointment, Krancer was a member of the energy transition team assembled by Tom Corbett, then governor-elect.

At the DEP, Krancer was a controversial figure, asserting: “At the end of the day, my job is to get gas done.” To this end, Krancer instituted a series of changes in the DEP, including a later-rescinded policy requiring all notices of violation to be approved by the department’s executive management in Harrisburg. Another policy required water contamination notifications to be cleared by top DEP brass before they could be sent to property owners. The DEP’s water testing procedures also come under fire in late 2012 when it came to light that the DEP withheld some findings from its water tests from some property owners, instigating an review by the state’s auditor general.

The fact that Krancer is going back to representing the drilling industry at Blank Rome raises the question of whether his close relationship with that industry is what drove these policies during his tenure at the DEP.

Krancer and other Pennsylvania officials’ ties to the natural gas industry are further detailed in the Public Accountability Initiative report “Fracking and the Revolving Door in Pennsylvania,” available by clicking here.

The data in the report can be found on LittleSis by viewing the profiles for individuals on the site’s “Pennsylvania Fracking Revolving Door” list.

As the DEC’s chief legal counsel, Russo played an important role in the state’s fracking deliberations. In June of 2012, the agency’s independence was questioned when the Environmental Working Group obtained a series of e-mails through a document request that were exchanged between the environmental agency and gas industry lobbyist Thomas West. These e-mails indicated that Russo had sent West and Yvonne Hennessey, another lobbyist at that time at West’s firm, a draft of the state’s revised oil and gas regulations six weeks before these regulations were released to the public.

Before joining the DEC, Russo was a partner at Sive, Paget & Riesel, a firm that bills itself as “uniquely qualified to defend environmental enforcement matters, particularly enforcement actions that threaten the health or viability of a company.” At Sive, Paget & Risel, Russo was an expert in environmental review, guiding clients through New York’s State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) process and through federal National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) review.

Greenberg Traurig, the firm that Russo is joining, has an energy and natural resources practice with an emphasis on the Marcellus Shale:

The team has wide-ranging upstream and midstream experience in conventional and unconventional plays including the Barnett Shale, as well as considerable environmental and real property experience in the “fairway” of current Marcellus drilling in Pennsylvania’s western and northern tiers, and in New York and West Virginia.

Greenberg Traurig represents gas operators and landowners, including “the owner of the mineral rights in about one-third of the Allegheny National Forest in National Environmental Policy Act and property rights litigation with the Forest Service and environmental groups over access to drill new gas wells.” The firm also has a lobbying practice, and has lobbied for GenOn Energy, ConocoPhillips, and its spin-off downstream and LNG company, Phillips 66 since 2009.

It seems that the gas industry revolving door dynamics observed in Pennsylvania are indeed being replicated north of the border in New York. Former governor George Pataki has been an advisory board member of the oil and gas producer Mesa Energy Holdings and he and former DEC Secretary John Cahill are of counsel to a firm, Chadbourne & Parke, that represents the oil and gas industry.

Which incentives, the public interest or the ability to leverage a regulatory post into a lucrative job representing the fossil fuel industry, are guiding New York’s policymakers when it comes to fracking?

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.”

Ostensibly dedicated to environmental protection and restoration, PEC’s permissive stance on fracking becomes more understandable in light of their extensive ties to the natural gas industry. All but two of the group’s eighteen directors work for companies with a stake in the energy industry, either as a driller such as Chesapeake Energy or as a service-provider such as the law and lobbying firm Duane Morris, which has a Marcellus Shale practice. Half of the board works for companies that are members of the gas industry advocacy group the Marcellus Shale Coalition (See table in sidebar).

The PEC is active in a wide variety of environmental issues in the state, operating “centers of excellence” in water resources, sustainable communities, and energy and climate. Though the group is not solely active in Marcellus Shale issues, the proportion of pro-fracking interests represented in PEC’s leadership raises questions about the group’s endorsement of natural gas. Does PEC back fracking to “bring about sustainable communities, protect our water resources, and address energy and climate issues?” Or is the group rather a mouthpiece for the Marcellus Shale Coalition?

Gas industry mouthpiece?

Telling, perhaps, is PEC’s decision to bestow former Governor Tom Ridge with a lifetime achievement award “for his achievements as a champion of the environment” in 2012. Ridge left the governor’s office to become the nation’s first Secretary of Homeland Security, after which he founded two consulting and lobbying firms, Ridge Global LLC and Ridge Policy Group, which were the recipients of a one year $900,000 contract to lobby for the Marcellus Shale Coalition. During this time, Ridge appeared on the Colbert Report to dispute water contamination claims and to promote fracking as a pathway to energy security. (It is worth noting that on the show Ridge explicitly denied being a lobbyist, despite being registered as such at the time and despite his firms’ contracts with the Marcellus Shale Coalition.)

Also telling is the PEC-run website Marcellus Facts, which aggregates news stories about the Marcellus Shale from local and national sources. Included among these stories are press releases from the Marcellus Shale Coalition, which is listed as a news source at the bottom of the page, without identifying them as coming from the gas industry.

The website also has, along its sidebar, a feed from the Twitter account paenvirodigest, which is “the instant news feature of www.PaEnvironmentDigest.com,” a blog written by former DEP Secretary David Hess. Hess is now the director of policy and communications for the government affairs firm Crisci Associates, and a registered as a lobbyist for Aqua America, Exelon, Shipley Energy, Dominion, Interstate Gas Supply, Covanta, and the Pennsylvania Petroleum Association, as well as for the Pennsylvania Environmental Council.

Further, among the news sources linked at the bottom of the Marcellus Facts page is former DEP Secretary John Hanger‘s “Facts of the Day” blog. Hanger is now of special counsel to the law firm Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, which describes itself as representing “every segment of the natural resources industry.” Hanger appeared in the pro-fracking film Truthland, conceived of by the industry public relations group Energy in Depth, in 2012 and is currently running for governor.

The Pennsylvania Environmental Council does not only have ties to the oil and gas industry, however. The group also has a close relationship with Pennsylvania government, especially the state’s environmental regulators. Given the PEC’s capture by the petroleum industry, it is troubling that Pennsylvania’s regulators rely on the group’s counsel for the environmental perspective.

Regulatory ties

When Tom Corbett became governor in 2011, he assembled a transition team tasked with “reviewing the operations of the state government departments and agencies under the governor’s jurisdiction and [preparing] a transition report.” The Energy and Environment committee of this team included three people tied to the Pennsylvania Environmental Council. Don Welsh was a former president of the council, Ellen Ferretti was the vice president of PEC’s northeast regional office and went on to become Corbett’s Deputy Secretary for Parks and Forestry at the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and Nicholas DeBenedictis, who is a chairman emeritus at PEC and is chairman and CEO of Aqua America as mentioned in the sidebar above.

The Energy and Environment transition team was the precursor to the Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission, which was instructed to review existing and proposed laws and regulations pertaining to Marcellus Shale development and provide recommendations on additional steps to protect the environment, efforts to promote the environmentally-sound development of natural gas resources, policies to encourage the use of natural gas and its byproducts, and proposals to address the impact of fracking on local communities. As described in PAI’s report on the regulatory revolving door, this commission was stacked with industry representatives, including Pennsylvania Environmental Council chairman Anthony Pennoni.

Furthermore, three people tied to the Pennsylvania Environmental Council – director Philip Hinerman, director emeritus Joseph Manko, and legislative counsel Thomas W Scott – serve on the rules committee of Pennsylvania’s Environmental Hearing Board, the trial court that hears appeals from Department of Environmental Protection actions.

Lastly, PEC director John Hines came to the council from a regulatory position. Prior to his job lobbying for Shell Oil and Gas, Hines was Deputy Executive Secretary for programs at the Department of Environmental Protection under Michael Krancer. While at the DEP, Hines authored a controversial e-mail detailing a new policy requiring all enforcement actions to be approved by himself or another top DEP staffer and cleared with Krancer. The policy, described by PennFuture’s Jan Jarrett as “a clear strategy to chill enforcement of gas drilling,” was rescinded after much protest.

Advocating a pro-fracking position and almost entirely captured by oil and gas industry representatives, the Pennsylvania Environmental Council seems to be part of a trend aiming to greenwash the natural gas industry. Like the American Clean Skies Foundation, the PEC presents a gas-friendly message, though perhaps more furtively than the Chesapeake Energy front group. PEC’s ties to both natural gas and to Pennsylvania’s environmental regulators represent a troubling synergy giving the industry more influence over natural gas policy in the guise of environmental protection.

The ties in this article and in the Pennsylvania revolving door report were can be found on LittleSis, PAI’s tool for researching connections between powerful people and organizations.

Data can also be added to LittleSis by clicking here to register for free.

Click here to read PAI’s full report “Fracking and the Revolving Door in Pennsylvania.”

Jacobi has consulted for the oil and gas industry for almost 20 years according to his resume. Since 1994, he has worked for Anschutz, Talisman, and Norse Energy, serving as the director of special projects for the latter from 2007 to 2011. In February 2012, joined Pittsburgh-based EQT as a senior geology advisor. That same year, he was named co-director of the Shale Resources and Society Institute at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

The Shale Resources and Society Institute was announced quietly in April 2012, following a report in Buffalo’s Artvoice newspaper. An allegedly peer-reviewed report followed in May titled “Environmental Impacts During Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling: Causes, Impacts, and Remedies.”

This report, a study of the notices of violation (NOVs) issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to Marcellus drillers, concluded that, thanks to enhanced regulation and better industry practices, polluting events in the Marcellus Shale were on the decline. However, UB retracted the peer-review claim when it became clear that the study had not, in fact, undergone peer review, but rather an “open peer-review method,” whereby five reviewers were asked to comment. Jacobi was one of these reviewers.

An analysis by PAI showed that the researchers either misinterpreted or misrepresented their data – major environmental impacts had actually increased in the time period studied.

Questions were also raised about the institute’s ties to the gas industry, as PAI’s investigation revealed that SRSI was co-directed by Jacobi and John P Martin, another gas industry consultant based in the Albany area. The SRSI website solicited donations from oil and gas companies and documents made public through document requests to the university revealed fundraising trips to Houston where many energy companies are headquartered; however, because the institute got its funding from the UB Foundation, a private non-profit corporation that is beyond the reach of New York’s Freedom of Information Law, it was impossible to tell whether gas industry donations had gone to the institute. Jacobi described SRSI’s funding in a radio program about the ensuing controversy:

“We’re trying to put that money into a slush fund that’s mixing it up,” says Jacobi. “Like a Slurpie, [for instance]. You don’t know what’s ice and what’s taste. It’s all mixed up.”

Following an inquiry by the State University of New York trustees, UB announced that it was closing the Shale Resources and Society Institute in a letter from President Satish K. Tripathi:

Conflicts – both actual and perceived – can arise between sources of research funding and expectations of independence when reporting research results. This, in turn, impacted the appearance of independence and integrity of the institute’s research.

“Research of such considerable importance and impact cannot be effectively conducted with a cloud of uncertainty over its work,” Tripathi wrote.

The Department of Environmental Conservation’s hiring of Jacobi is as troubling as his affiliation with SRSI, if not moreso. With longtime ties to the industry, and a current financial interest in fracking’s approval, Jacobi’s conclusions about the seismic consequences from the practice are inherently conflicted. On top of his industry ties, the report Jacobi reviewed for the institute he co-directed relied on a error for its primary conclusion, an error that no one associated with the report, Jacobi included, attempted to correct. Whether this was a misinterpretation or misrepresentation, with Jacobi’s conflicts of interest it casts doubt on Jacobi’s reliability in determining whether fracking is safe.

This post is cross-posted at the Public Accountability Initiative blog.

*** CBS News recently published a story on the frackademia phenomenon featuring PAI’s research that highlighted Jacobi’s DEC work and industry ties:

“Jacobi, a former director of the Shale Resources and Society Institute, has worked as an advisor to gas drillers for nearly two decades. His research will be included in an environmental review study out next week that will help decide whether the state’s fracking moratorium is lifted.”

Brian Montopoli’s whole article, titled “A poisoned well? Fracking studies stir doubts,” is available online.

Tobacco and fast food lobbyist Rick Berman.

Smoking is good for your health. And raising the minimum wage will lead to job losses.

The corporate backers of tobacco and fast-food lobbyist Rick Berman would like you to believe both of these claims. Berman runs a notorious network of nonprofit front groups that peddle industry spin on behalf of corporate giants like Philip Morris. Berman’s groups are currently the target of an IRS complaint arguing that they illegally advance the private interests of their corporate clients in violation of tax laws.

One Berman front group, the Employment Policies Institute (EmPI), recently took to the pages of The Buffalo News to argue the second point, that raising the minimum wage in New York State will result in job losses. In a recent Another Voice, EmPI’s Michael Saltsman highlighted a study authored by two UC Irvine researchers that supposedly proved this point.

The column stressed the “scholarly” nature of the study and the authors’ academic affiliation, but failed to note that it was funded by EmPI itself. (Understandably, readers may have mistaken the single, booming voice of big business for an informed conversation among a diverse array of experts.)

You can read the rest here.

Berman himself doesn’t make close to a minimum wage: in a circular arrangement of questionable legality, his nonprofits paid his consulting firm $15 million between 2008 and 2010. The way in which he profits from this setup will be a key issue in any IRS investigation.

If you’re interested in learning more about Berman, check out his LittleSis page, his Sourcewatch page, or this scathing note his son, musician David Berman, wrote to his fans about his father’s work.

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.

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.