Media Contact:
Contact: Justin Wasser, jwasser@earthworks.org
HARRISBURG, PA (October 29, 2025) – Representatives from Clean Air Council, Earthworks, Environmental Health Project, Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), and Protect PT rallied at the Pennsylvania State Capitol Wednesday to demand that Pennsylvania’s Environmental Quality Board (EQB) live up to its mandate and protect state residents. From the main rotunda at the Pennsylvania State Capitol Complex, speakers representing this coalition urged EQB to act and delivered over 400 postcards and written comments from Pennsylvanians who support increased protective buffers distances to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
It has been over a year since the Council and EIP submitted a rulemaking petition to EQB to increase minimum protective buffer distances between new fracking sites and homes, schools, water sources, and streams. Since this submission, there have been at least 382 unconventional wells drilled in Pennsylvania. These new wells could have been subject to protective buffers rule that would keep people across the Commonwealth safer by minimizing exposure to fracking pollution. Instead, the EQB has failed to act on our petition, refusing to vote to allow the DEP to review our petition at the April EQB meeting and instead tabling the petition.
“When he was Attorney General, Josh Shapiro’s own grand jury once recommended strengthening setback requirements across the state. Now that he is Governor, he has adopted the motto of ‘get s— done.’ It’s been more than a year now since Pennsylvanians have demanded those safer setbacks,” said Alex Bomstein, Executive Director of Clean Air Council. “Gov. Shapiro, it’s time to get stuff done!”
“I stood with impacted residents a year ago requesting Governor Shapiro make good on his Grand Jury report recommendation to protect families from fracking by increasing the distance between Pennsylvanians and polluters,” said Melissa Ostroff, Pennsylvania Policy & Field Advocate at Earthworks. “Not a day goes by without more evidence showing the harm of fracking on communities – and the time to act has long since passed. I urge EQB to move this petition forward to the next step in the regulatory process without delay.”
“We were in Harrisburg last fall, when we first submitted our petition to the EQB for protective buffers from fracking. Now, a year later, our petition has still not received full and proper consideration from our government,” said Gillian Graber, Executive Director of Protect PT. “So, we’ll be back in the Capital continuing to uplift testimony from frontline residents and share the scientific evidence that shows that current drilling setbacks are not doing enough to keep us safe. The EQB has a duty to all Pennsylvanians to allow the DEP to thoroughly study this important information.”
“Every day that Pennsylvania fails to adopt protective buffers from fracking sites the dangers to health and the environment mount,” said Lisa Hallowell, Senior Attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project. “After a year watching our petition for health-based common-sense minimum setbacks languish, we are here demanding that EQB act with urgency to move our petition forward.”
“The research has been clear for years: the closer one lives to fracking operations, the greater the risk of developing negative short- and long-term health issues,” said Alison L. Steele, Executive Director, Environmental Health Project. “As scientific evidence of the public health impacts of fracking continues to mount, the gap between research and policy widens in Pennsylvania. Any further delay to increase setback distances continues to disregard the negative health impacts that community members living near operations have been dealing with for years.”
The Environmental Quality Board has had ample time—an entire year—to decide whether to advance our commonsense rulemaking petition and study the implications of stronger protective buffers around sensitive sites and communities,” said Katie Jones, Ohio River Valley Coordinator, FracTracker Alliance. “Immediate action is now warranted, as this regulation change will better safeguard the health and safety of the 3.6 million Pennsylvanians living in areas where fracking is feasible without imposing a de facto ban on fracking.”
Setbacks, also referred to as protective buffers and no-drill zones in the context of fracking, are mandatory minimum distances that fracking wells must be placed away from homes, schools, hospitals, drinking water wells, and surface waters. Pennsylvania’s current fracking well location requirements—which include a waivable 500-foot setback from buildings and a 1,000-foot setback from water supply extraction points—are woefully insufficient to protect public health and the environment from the dangers of fracking. In fact, the current distances were not determined based on public health evidence. By failing to move this popular rulemaking petition forward, the EQB has done significant harm to Pennsylvanians while helping the oil and gas industries, protecting polluters instead of people.