Ski Areas In Pennsylvania

Regulators say fracking not as dangerous to water quality as thought

Two US state-level regulators of water use and environmental issues on Tuesday suggested that concerns about the impact of hydraulic fracturing on water quality and supplies are overblown.

Scott Perry, director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's Bureau of Oil and Gas Management, said he hears a lot of public discussion about fracking and the potential threat it poses to groundwater.

Yet after a "million experiments across the county," and doing his own research into the subject, "I've yet to see a single impact of fracking actually directly communicating with fresh groundwater resources," Perry told the Mid-Atlantic Conference of Regulatory Utilities Commissioners in Hershey, Pennsylvania. "Again and again and again, I never see a single incidence of fracking causing this direct communication that we keep hearing about."

Instead, environmental issues are more likely to arise during site and well construction and during a company's wastewater management, he said.

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To ensure that the discharge waters, which typically have a high salt concentration, do not damage local water ecosystems, the DEP has changed its regulations to require that all discharges to waterways must be of drinking-water quality. "That was a tough call to make," Perry said, because many developers were planning on disposing of water based on the prior and less restrictive rules.

"The amount of water being reported to be used by this industry is out of whack," said Jim Richenderfer, Susquehanna River Basin Commission's director of technical programs. The commission is a water management agency that coordinates the use of the Susquehanna River Watershed in three states.

"The amount of water being consumed by the gas industry is really not that much" when compared to other areas of use, he said.

On average, the Susquehanna River sends to the bay 26 billion gal/day, Richenderfer said.

Difficult Liability Claims Against Pennsylvania Ski Resorts ...

For many years, both Pennsylvania Law as well as Case Law have come down on the side of the Commonwealth’s ski resorts for both legal and economic/business reasons. In general, this is when someone is participating in downhill skiing, snowboarding and snow tubing and various activities such as boarding and unboarding of ski lifts, etc., there have been ways the assumption of risk doctrine is applied when someone is injured because of the inherent risks of these activities. Overall, the law makes it difficult for a injured Plaintiff to succeed in a case against the ski resorts in any of these areas.  

However, there are exceptions to this. Pennsylvania Courts have held that a person does not assume the risk of another’s negligence as a matter of law when the participants are engaging in a non competitive, non contact recreational activity. Therefore, there can be circumstances where an injured party can sue, participating in these events. Courts have held that a ski lift operator could be found negligent for leaving a chair lift seat in the up position. Also, a skier does not assume the inherent risk of being struck on the slopes by an intoxicated teenager, and such a risk is not an inherent risk of the sport of downhill skiing. It has further been ruled that a claim can be made against a ski resort for failing to have ski patrol remove intoxicated persons from the slope. There could be claims made for other properly alleged acts of negligence which would go beyond the areas where the assumption of the risk doctrine may apply. The Pennsylvania Lawyers & Attorneys of Stark & Stark Law Firm offer services related to Alternative Dispute Resolution, Bankruptcy & Creditor's Rights,Business Succession Planning, Collections, Community Associations, Condemnation, Corporate Investigation & White Collar, Employment, Franchise, Intellectual Property, Litigation, Non-Profit Organizations, Real Estate, Zoning & Land Use, Securities, Shareholder & Partner Disputes, serving Philadelphia, Bucks, Montgomery and Lehigh counties, Newton, Yardley, Upper Makefield, Lower Makefield and Lehigh Valley.

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