931. Pennsylvania Fracking Law Opens Up Drilling on College Campuses

Penn State campus

By Sydney Brownstone, Mother Jones, October 12, 2012

Last year, when Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett suggested offsetting college tuition fees by leasing parts of state-owned college campuses to natural gas drillers, more than a few Pennsylvanians were left blinking and rubbing their eyes. But it was no idle threat: After quietly moving through the state Senate and House, this week the governor signed into law a bill that opens up 14 of the state’s public universities to fracking, oil drilling, and coal mining on campus.

For a system starved by budget cuts, it's an appetizing deal: The Indigenous Mineral Resources Development Act mandates that 50 percent of all fees and royalties from the mineral leases will be retained by the university where those minerals are mined, 35 percent will be distributed across the state system, and another 15 percent will go towards subsidizing student tuition.

Of course, those benefits don't take into account externalized costs.

Environmentalists and educators are concerned that fracking and other resource exploitation on campus could leave students directly exposed to harms like explosions, water contamination, and air pollution. They're also worried oil and gas development would leave campuses ruined for future generations. It doesn't help that Pennsylvania has a lousy regulation record, with a tally of violations that have increased more than fourfold since 2005. According to the PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center, Pennsylvania drilling companies racked up a total of 3,355 violations of environmental law between 2008 and 2011, 2,392 of which posed a direct threat to the environment and safety of communities. Meanwhile, in 2010, the state left 82,602 active wells go uninspected, more than all the active wells in New York and Ohio put together.

"Students need a place to learn and grow, but they're being forced to jeopardize their health to get that education," says Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of Delaware Riverkeeper, a local water quality watchdog. "This has been a big giveaway by the state of Pennsylvania to drilling interests, and it's at the expense of students and the public."

Still, that giveaway deal can look awfully sweet, especially when the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education has been struggling under Governor Corbett’s draconian budget cuts. In 2011, Corbett, who received $1.3 million from the oil and gas industry in his 2010 election, slashed funding for PASSHE’s 14 schools by 18 percent. Though he briefly floated the idea of cutting another 20 percent from the system in February, cuts remained at the previous year's levels in the final draft of budget deliberations. That same budget also included a $1.7 billion tax break for Shell in order to coax a refinery into Western PA.

Professor Bob Myers, who runs the environmental studies program at Lock Haven University, one of the schools at the edge of the Marcellus, says he understands the school system's economic concerns. Still, he's horrified at the prospect that PASSHE might install rigs near students. "I've become extremely concerned, disturbed, and disgusted by the environmental consequences of fracking," Myers says. "They've had explosions, tens of thousands of gallons of chemicals spilled. And we're going to put this on campus?"

Pennsylvania isn't alone, nor was it the first to come up with the idea of funding higher education with natural gas revenue. A couple of colleges in West Virginia have leased their land to fracking companies, and Ohio has a similar law to Pennsylvania's. The University of Texas also makes money from natural gas well pads on its land, and even installed one 400 feet away from a daycare center at its Arlington campus. (The daycare center has now moved.)

While the new Pennsylvania law will apply to all 14 member universities within the State System of Higher Education, the six schools that sit on top of (or are adjacent to) Marcellus Shale are likely the most economically viable to frack. Below is a map of the Pennsylvania schools that are subject to the provisions of the act, the PA schools that sit on top of the coveted shale, and universities outside of Pennsylvania that are leasing or considering leasing natural gas acreage on their land.