Compromise will allow fracking in national forest

Associated Press

NORFOLK, Va.

Environmentalists and energy boosters alike welcomed a federal compromise announced Tuesday that will allow fracking in the largest national forest in the eastern United States, but make most of its woods off-limits to drilling.

The decision was highly anticipated because about half of the George Washington National Forest sits atop the Marcellus shale formation, a vast underground deposit of natural gas that runs from upstate New York to West Virginia and yields more than $10 billion in gas a year.

The federal management plan reverses an outright ban on hydraulic fracturing that the U.S. Forest Service had proposed in 2011 for the 1.1 million-acre forest, which includes the headwaters of the James and Potomac rivers. Those rivers feed the Chesapeake Bay, which is the focus of a multibillion-dollar, multistate restoration directed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

A total ban would have been a first for America’s national forests, which unlike national parks are commonly leased out for mining, timber and drilling. But some environmentalists were pleased that at least some balance was struck between energy development and conservation.

“We think the decision shows the Forest Service listened to the local community,” said Sarah Francisco, leader of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s national forests and parks program.

The new plan eliminates the potential for oil and gas leases on 985,000 acres where they could have been granted, and permits drilling on 167,000 acres with existing private mineral rights and 10,000 acres already leased to oil and gas companies.