DNR providing more notice

BIG LAKE -- The outcry of public concern about the lack of regulations and notice pertaining to shallow-gas drilling leases seems to be reaching the ears of state Department of Natural Resources officials.

DNR representatives told residents gathered at a recent public meeting that comment periods were being extended. They also welcome additional comments on how to define their regulations to make them more amenable to landowners.

More than 250 residents, some from the same group who attended a meeting last month in Sutton, turned out to the Big Lake Elementary School gymnasium to learn more about coal bed methane. Representatives from the state, Evergreen Resources, Chickaloon Village, Sutton and a Wyoming businessman from the heavily drilled Powder River Basin presented information before a question-and-answer series.

It was the first of two meetings put together by the Mat-Su Borough at the request of several people who were at the Aug. 18 meeting in Sutton. And although the second meeting was scheduled to wrap up Wednesday evening, it's likely more will be held, after residents from the borough's northern reaches requested meetings be held for their communities as well. In the three weeks between the initial meeting in Sutton and the Big Lake meeting, DNR Oil and Gas petrologist James Hansen said his staff has come up with a few changes.

"In the year 2000, we went out for public notice in the Daily News and local newspapers," Hansen said, adding that public notices about applications for shallow-gas leases were also distributed to the Mat-Su Borough, community councils the department had contact information for and local tribal organizations. That policy is being expanded. "In regard to the public we've been listening to lately, we've changed our ways on that."

The new public notice policy lists not only the areas where the public notices were previously sent -- local and regional newspapers and the department's Web site -- but notices will also be sent to: the Mat-Su Borough; local community councils; native corporations, organizations and tribes; non-governmental organizations such as Trustees for Alaska and Alaska Center for the Environment; and anyone who has previously sent in a comment card about the shallow gas leases.

Two new leases are proposed, he said, and the department is sending out notices according to its newly amended public notice policies. Hansen said 11 Evergreen leases are also within the comment period set to close on Sept. 25, but the department has agreed to re-notice those leases and extend the public comment period until Nov. 14. He added that one way of keeping track of a lease is to issue a comment on it. Anyone who comments on a lease will receive a copy of the director's decision of whether or not to issue the lease. Commenters, he said, are also able to appeal the director's decision during the 20-day appeal period following the director's determination.

"This is a new program," Hansen said. "We just issued our first leases in June. It's a new program we're working with, and we're feeling our way, trying to figure out how best to handle this."

Hansen said the department is also working on other aspects of the program, one of which concerns regulatory wording the department follows when deciding whether or not to issue an exploration permit. The statute states that if the department director, after reviewing public comments, "determines that the discovery of a local source of natural gas would benefit residents of an area, the director shall execute a lease for the area …"

Several residents have asked for a definition of the words "benefit" and "area," but Hansen told them at previous meetings those words were not yet defined. If methane extracted from the Sutton area, he said at the Sutton meeting, were found to be beneficial to residents across the Mat-Su, or even to the residents of the state through the addition of another source of natural gas or through job creation, it could be construed as beneficial. Now, Hansen told those at the Big Lake meeting, those two words are being scrutinized, and the department is seeking help coming up with a suitable definition. Public comments, he said, are welcomed.

Although the explanation of state laws pertaining to natural gas development and the changes DNR was working on to include landowners in the process more than they had in previous lease was encouraging to some, others questioned whether it would really make a difference.

Philip Hoy, a land and business owner from Gillette, Wyo., expressed some strong sentiment about the helpfulness of state agencies in his area in regulating shallow-gas drilling. Hoy gave a presentation at the meeting, showing acres of land destroyed by drillers in the Powder River Basin, spider webs of road cutting across prairie grasslands and reservoirs of water that destroyed native grasses it touched along with cutting production on alfalfa fields and killing miles of generations-old cottonwood stands. Hoy repeatedly said he, like many in his Campbell County hometown, didn't want to stand in the way of drilling and the benefits it could bring to the area.

"Almost all of the people in Campbell County are not against drilling, but what we lack is enough laws to make them do it right," Hoy said. With regulations that include infrastructure for expansion, the spider web of roads could have been reduced, he said. With maximum acceptable noise level regulations and setback requirements, residents of the retirement community who wear earplugs to block out the continual drone of compressors just down the road would be able to live peacefully or sell their homes.

"It's a really sad story, people. Everything they have said -- the possible impacts -- come true to your town," Hoy said. "If there's not a law, you're up the creek, and you folks are up the creek."