The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s Dan Hopey reported yesterday that: 

The recently announced policy from the state Department of
Environmental Protection policy addresses how the department will
determine if emissions from two or more stationary air pollution sources
— facilities such as gas wells, pipelines, compressor stations,
storage tanks and refineries — should be “aggregated” and regulated as a
single source.

The new policy uses the physical distance between the shale gas
facilities as a major qualifying criteria for determining if they should
be considered a single, major source of air pollutants that would be
required to meet stricter emissions standards, instead of individual
emissions sources subject to lesser pollution monitoring and controls.

Kathryn Klaber, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, said the
change is simply a clarification of “a very complex and long-standing
body of guidance” from the federal government.

“This is not a new policy,” she said. “You still have to get a
permit. You still have to comply with all the rules. But how big are we
going to define the source?

“Predictability and clarity in an otherwise uncertain area of the law
is in everyone’s best interest. Transparency in the process benefits
everybody involved.” 

Environmental groups see it differently.

“The department is sticking its head in the sand if it looks at these
shale gas facilities individually instead of as a group, because the
emissions from that drilling group have a cumulative impact,” said
Thomas Au, conservation chair of the Sierra Club Pennsylvania Chapter
and co-chair of its oil and gas committee.

The DEP should be looking at “clusters of related drilling
facilities” for purposes of controlling emissions, Mr. Au said. That
approach was part of the emissions aggregation policy adopted by the
Rendell administration in December 2010.