Budget cuts prevent environmental agencies from enforcing the law

We received a note today from John Cleveland, a long-time KFTC member who lives in Letcher County. His story is yet another example of how state budget cuts are making it impossible for public agencies to fulfill their mission of protecting public health and the environment.

John writes that oil and gas inspectors have apparently been told to ignore aspects of the law they are charged to enforce. This is not surprising, since the budget proposed by Governor Steve Beshear and passed by the General Assembly slashed the budget for the Kentucky Department of Natural Resources by 21%! Here's John's letter:

I had a State Oil and Gas (O/G) inspector show up at my house today. He told me that the State is not enforcing state law that requires an oil/gas company to register all tanks that collect oil or brine that are located at gas wells. He told me that he was inspecting an area, when he discovered a new tank and well that had not been there in the past. He couldn't find any info in his records of this tank, so he took a gps point for the site, and checked on it when he got back to his office. He was unable to find info there either. He asked his supervisor about this, and his supervisor told him that since the state budget cutbacks over the last few years, that they weren't registering these tanks any more, because they didn't have the staff to do the paperwork or the inspections.

He told me that the unregistered tanks he's aware of are mostly owned by Chesapeake and Equitable Gas companies. State law requires oil/gas companies to register all tanks that hold brine or oil. That doesn't mean that they don't have to do it if they don't feel like it, the law states SHALL register! So obviously some of the oil/gas companies are no longer registering storage tanks and the state is not assuring that they do.

What if there is a leak, or some vandals shoot holes in one of these tanks. How long might it be before someone happens to come by and see toxic brine water or oil running in the stream? There has been a massive number of new wells in the last two years in eastern Kentucky, so this is a disaster that will happen, it's just a matter of when.

Wouldn't complying with the law and assuring an adequate number of inspectors, be the right thing to do? When does too much cutting the budget start to endanger the water, fish, wildlife or even human life? It appears to me that we have reached that point or gone past it. I call on Governor Beshear to look at the long-term costs of cutting enforcement in oil, gas and mining, and fix this problem.