Notably absent from the Oil & Gas task force meeting last Tuesday were many property owners with Oil & Gas mineral interests. Everyone at the meeting, planner and audience member alike, seemed quite at ease with the proposal in the MOU to impose very expensive water quality testing protocols on all future Oil & Gas development.
Arguably, the proposed testing protocol could make energy development here so expensive as to preclude it ever happening at all. Judging from some of the body language by at least one of the planners (red hat), one might conclude that preemption of drilling was the real purpose behind the proposed zoning law.
Who would pay for these protocols? Payment would come in the form of reduced revenues to mineral property owners. Those imposing the law are not those who would pay for the law. Isn’t that an awfully familiar theme these days? The casual air with which these folks discuss making law to spend large amounts of other people’s money is quite astonishing.
In days of old we used to call that taxation without representation. A more modern description might be politically motivated bad science.
Those who have an interest in protecting their property might want to attend future meetings of this group and stand up for their interests. There is just no balance in the room right now.
Should laws be built around expensive experiments? Should those with no stake in bearing the expense of the experiment be the ones making those laws?
B_Imperial
Proposed water test protocol. Click to enlarge.
