Please call the Governor’s Office, your State Senator and your State Representative and ask for public hearings concerning the Old Loggers Path and the Loyalsock Forest. To help you better understand what is at stake, please click here and visit the "Photos" section. The photographs capture the beauty of the Old Loggers Path, contrasted with images of the destruction of a state forest a mere 10 miles down the road.

In February 2013, the Keystone Trails Association joined with eight other organizations and sent a letter to the Chair of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. Later, I had the opportunity to meet with Representative Miller and share our concerns. Please feel free to use talking points from the letter below in your conversation with, or letter to, your state elected officials.

The undersigned membership organizations write on behalf of over 50,000 citizens of the Commonwealth keenly interested in the management of Pennsylvania State Forest lands. We respectfully request that the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee conduct a public hearing on the ongoing refusal of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (“DCNR”) to allow public input into far-reaching decisions it is poised to make regarding natural gas development in the Loyalsock State Forest.

The Loyalsock State Forest covers approximately 114,000 acres in Lycoming and Sullivan Counties. In Lycoming County, there are some 25,000 acres for which the DCNR owns the surface rights but not the oil and gas rights. These rights are owned by Anadarko E&P Company, LP (“Anadarko”) and the International Development Corporation (“IDC”), and the DCNR refers to this acreage as the “Clarence Moore Lands,” after an individual who owned Anadarko’s and IDC’s interest several decades ago. The Clarence Moore Lands include some of the most valuable and sensitive ecological and recreational resources in Pennsylvania’s State Forest system, including the Old Logger’s Path, a 27-mile hiking trail; the Devils Elbow Natural Area; and much of the watershed of Rock Run, an Exceptional Value stream widely hailed as the most beautiful in Pennsylvania.

As you know, a “split estate” generally results in a situation where the subsurface owner has the right to make reasonable use of the surface to the extent necessary to extract oil and gas. For some 19,000 acres of the Clarence Moore Lands, this general rule does not apply, however. In 1989, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled that under the 1933 deed by which the Commonwealth acquired the Clarence Moore Lands, the Commonwealth has exclusive control of the surface, notwithstanding the fact that it does not own the oil and gas rights. See Clarence Moore v. Department of Environmental Resources, 566 A.2d 906 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1989). In 1992 John Walker, then-chief of DER’s Minerals Section, described this situation as “unique.”

In 2011, members of our organizations who recreate in the Forest began to encounter seismic testing crews there. On September 7, 2012, six of the undersigned organizations delivered a letter to DCNR Secretary Richard Allan requesting information about the DCNR’s plans for gas development in the Loyalsock, and an opportunity for public input in the DCNR’s decision-making process about these important public lands.

Based on documents that we have obtained under the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law, we know that in 2012 Anadarko submitted to the DCNR a plan to develop gas under the Clarence Moore lands, and that Anadarko and the DCNR are currently negotiating a surface use agreement. Under section 302(b)(3) of the Conservation and Natural Resources Act, 71 P.S. § 1340.302(b)(3), the DCNR has the authority to grant rights-of-way over State Forest lands if “the interest of the Commonwealth or its citizens will be promoted by such grant…” We believe that it is impossible for the DCNR to determine whether Anadarko’s use the surface of the Loyalsock State Forest will be “in the interests of the Commonwealth or its citizens” without hearing from its citizens – the families and individuals who hike, fish, hunt, swim, picnic, bike and watch birds and wildlife in the Forest. Given the ecological and recreational value of the Clarence Moore Lands, the unique legal circumstances surrounding their control, and the DCNR’s 2010 conclusion that “there are zero State Forest Land acres suitable for [additional] gas leasing involving surface disturbance,” it is clear that the citizens of the Commonwealth must have a say in whether the DCNR allows any surface development on the Clarence Moore lands that it controls.

In light of the DCNR’s total exclusion of the public from its decision-making processes, and the ongoing negotiations between DCNR and Anadarko, the undersigned groups respectfully request that the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee convene a public hearing in Lycoming County as soon as possible to investigate DCNR’s refusal to allow public input into its determination as to whether surface development in the Clarence Moore Lands of the Loyalsock State Forest is in the interests of the Commonwealth or its citizens.

Action Alert for the Old Loggers Path