Gov. Tom Wolf plans to ban new fracking in Pennsylvania parks, forests

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signs the Gift Ban, his first executive order inside of the Capitol in Harrisburg, on Jan. 20, 2015. Wolf earlier in the day took the oath of office to become the 47th governor of Pennsylvania. The Gift Ban applies to all political appointees and state workers under his jurisdiction and also includes a requirement that all private legal contracts go out to bid.

(AP File Photo)

Gov. Tom Wolf plans to sign an executive order ending a short-lived effort by his predecessor to expand the extraction of natural gas from rock buried deep below Pennsylvania's state parks and forests, his office said Wednesday.

Following through on a campaign pledge, Wolf will sign the order restoring a moratorium on new drilling leases involving public lands on Thursday at Benjamin Rush State Park in northeast Philadelphia.

A hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, natural gas extraction site is shown Jan. 17, 2013, in New Milford, Pennsylvania.

It will supersede an order that Republican Gov. Tom Corbett signed in May and reinstate the ban that former Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, instituted in 2010.

Environmentalists praised the action, saying it reflects the new Democratic governor's support for strong environmental regulation.

"Pennsylvanians from every walk of life will applaud this announcement," said David Masur, director of Philadelphia-based PennEnvironment.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group, sharply criticized the governor.

"This deeply misguided and purely political action to unnecessarily ban the safe and tightly-regulated development of natural gas from beneath taxpayer-owned lands flies in the face of common sense," said the coalition's president, Dave Spigelmyer.

Corbett's order authorized state officials to negotiate new leases for hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, gas extraction through horizontal wells drilled from adjacent, privately owned land or areas previously leased for drilling in state forests. It barred drilling-related construction that disturbs the surface of public lands, but that was not enough to quell criticism from critics concerned about the impact.

The new leases, which Corbett hoped would generate tens of millions of dollars to help balance the state budget, were put on hold in a deal with the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation pending the resolution of its 2012 lawsuit seeking to block them.

The state Commonwealth Court sided with the Corbett administration in a decision earlier this month. It upheld the government's right to lease more public lands for natural gas and oil drilling, and the diversion of rent and royalty payments from a land conservation fund to other programs.

Since the first leases for drilling on the Marcellus Shale formation were sold in 2008, hundreds of millions of dollars of that revenue has been tapped to shore up the state's operating budgets under Corbett and Rendell.

John Childe Jr., the foundation's lawyer, said the group is "very grateful" for Wolf's expected action.

The foundation will continue to press an appeal on its argument that the leasing violates a state constitutional provision that says public natural resources are "the common property of all the people including generations yet to come" and that the state's role is to conserve and maintain them, Childe said.

"We need to get some clarity on the meaning of the public trust," he said.

Wolf also campaigned on a pledge to seek legislative approval for a 5 percent extraction tax on natural gas to raise additional revenue for public schools and other programs.