1 COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF … · PRESENTATION By Mr. Andrew Dehoff 10 - 14 QUESTIONS 14 - 22 PRESENTATION By Mr. Thomas J. Shepstone 22 - 25 QUESTIONS 26 - 35 PRESENTATION

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SARGENT'S COURT REPORTING SERVICE, INC.(814) 536-8908

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COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIAHOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

STATE GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE

SHREWSBURY BOROUGH MUNICIPAL BUILDING

MONDAY, JUNE 26, 20179:00 A.M.

PUBLIC HEARING - SUSQUEHANNA RIVER BASIN COMMISSION

BEFORE: HONORABLE DARYL METCALFE, MAJORITY CHAIRMANHONORABLE CRIS DUSHHONORABLE KRISTIN HILLHONORABLE BRETT MILLERHONORABLE BRAD ROAEHONORABLE FRANK RYANHONORABLE CRAIG STAATSHONORABLE JUDY WARDHONORABLE MATTHEW BRADFORD, MINORITY CHAIRMANHONORABLE DONNA BULLOCKHONORABLE MARY JO DALEYHONORABLE PAMELA DELISSIOHONORABLE MADELEINE DEAN

ALSO PRESENT:HONORABLE DAN MOULHONORABLE STEPHEN BLOOMHONORABLE DAWN W. KEEFERHONORABLE WILLIAM TALLMANHONORABLE KATE KLUNKHONORABLE DAVID H. ZIMMERMAN

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COMMITTEE STAFF PRESENT:

REPUBLICAN CAUCUSAMY HOCKENBERRY

RESEARCH ANALYST

PAM NEUGARDADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT

DEMOCRATIC CAUCUSKIM HILEMAN

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

KATHY SEIDLRESEARCH ANALYST

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I N D E X

OPENING REMARKSBy Chairman Metcalfe 4 - 5

OPENING REMARKSBy Representative Hill 5 - 8

COMMENTSBy Chairman Metcalfe 9 - 10

PRESENTATIONBy Mr. Andrew Dehoff 10 - 14

QUESTIONS 14 - 22

PRESENTATIONBy Mr. Thomas J. Shepstone 22 - 25

QUESTIONS 26 - 35

PRESENTATIONBy Mr. Pete Ramsey 36 - 41

QUESTIONS 41 - 47

PRESENTATIONBy Richard "Buck" Buchanan 47 - 52

QUESTIONS 53 - 59

PRESENTATIONBy Donald Geistwhite, Jr. 59 - 65

QUESTIONS 65 - 70

PRESENTATIONBy Jim Eshleman 71 - 78

QUESTIONS 78 - 80

PRESENTATIONBy Attorney Matt Battersby 81 - 87

QUESTIONS 87 - 92

CONCLUDING REMARKSBy Chairman Metcalfe 93

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P R O C E E D I N G S-----------------------------------------------------------

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Meeting is called to order.

Before we call the attendance, if I could ask everybody to

please rise and could I ask Representative Ryan to lead us in

the Pledge of Allegiance.

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE RECITED

CHAIRMAN RYAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: If I could ask our Member

Secretary to call the roll please.

ROLL CALL TAKEN

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, Representative Hill.

We are joined by other members besides the committee members

today. Representative Moul, Representative Bloom,

Representative Keefer, Representative Tallman, Representative

Klunk, Representative Zimmerman. Did I miss anybody? We may

have some other members coming in and out as the hearing is

proceeding today with other competing interests for the members

at times today. So we appreciate the members who are here

today. Thank you for joining us.

And we will start off this morning's hearing on the

Susquehanna River Basin Commission. This is the second hearing

that we're having of the House State Government Committee

regarding concerns with the Commission. And our opening

statement this morning will be by Representative Hill whose

district we're currently sitting in. So, Representative Hill,

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whenever you're ready.

Before you start your statement I also want to

mention we do have a staff person here from Senator Wagner's

office. And we also have Mr. Reilly here on behalf of

Congressman Perry's office. So we appreciate both --- both of

those individuals being here and the interest that Congressman

Perry and Senator Wagner have in this issue. Representative

Hill.

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good

morning. I'd like to thank the members of the House State

Government Committee as well as Congressman Perry's office and

Senator Wagner's office for their attendance this morning.

And Chairman Metcalfe, thank you for hosting this

hearing in southern York County.

Thank you to Shrewsbury Borough, Mayor Pete

Schnabel, Borough Council Vice President Mike Sharkey. I saw

him here somewhere. Nate Kirschman, who does so much for this

borough.

A special thank you to the people who keep the

trains running here, Cindy Bosley, our borough secretary, and

Public Works Superintendent Brian Sweitzer. We appreciate your

gracious hospitality.

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission, or the SRBC,

was created in 1970, when the Susquehanna River Basin Compact

was drafted and signed into law. The compact, as adopted by

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the Congress of the United States and the legislatures of New

York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, provides the mechanism to

guide the conservation, development and administration of the

water resources of the river basin.

On its website the SRBC lists its mission as

enhancing public welfare through comprehensive planning, water

supply allocation and management of the water resources of the

Susquehanna River Basin.

We are here today because we believe that the

Commission has overstepped the bounds of its compact at the

expense of the people of Pennsylvania.

Over two years ago I received a call from the small

Borough of Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury, where we sit here today, is

really a hidden gem. It's a great place to live, to work,

raise a family. It's listed on the National Register of

Historic Places. It's got a great little downtown. Fifty (50)

percent of the Main Street buildings were built prior to 1860.

But what really makes Shrewsbury special is the

leadership of this community. It's been excellent managers and

stewards of borough resources. So Borough Council President

Buck Buchanan explained to me that they were in the process of

re-permitting two of the wells in their municipal water system.

He shared that the Commission was requiring daily

reports of the depth of each of the Borough's six wells, two of

which had been in use for over 45 years. After examining how

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many man hours, this would require the Borough, which has less

than 4,000 residents, was forced to purchase a computerized

monitoring system. That purchase resulted in three rate hikes

in addition to long-term water line replacement projects being

put on hold, all the result of needing to accumulate data that

essentially we're really not sure what they do with it. When

the Borough asked why, the Commission's justification was,

well, we now know more about our wells.

Buchanan went on to tell me of the more than

$141,000 price tag associated with permitting those two wells

and the Commission's decision to reduce the length of permits

from 30 to 15 years and the prospect of re-permitting the

Borough's additional wells. Thus, began over a year-and-a-half

of research by myself, Representative Moul, many other

legislators that shared mutual concerns about the Commission

into every aspect of the Commission, from its original compact

to its finances and its dockets.

The research led to a meeting with Acting

Pennsylvania DEP Secretary McDonnell and his alternate to the

SRBC, Ms. Heffner, as well as many other legislators, senators,

representatives from boroughs, townships and businesses in the

Susquehanna River Basin.

The meeting was cordial, but still we were left with

many unanswered questions. In particular, Representative Moul

asked, do you believe that the SRBC needs to have more

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regulations and funding to continue their business after

hearing of the balances in their reserve funds of over $40

million of taxpayer money acquired through fees and fines and

all of the complaints of overregulation. Ms. Heffner paused,

thought and replied, no.

Representative Moul's follow-up question was why did

you rubber stamp a yes vote for the SRBC to increase its fees

in the new regulations at the last meeting? To date, we have

no response.

After this meeting, we heard from more

municipalities, more golf courses, more small businesses, small

utility companies. Their stories were all too familiar. As a

matter of fact, we could probably finish them for them.

We've heard from a number of other House members

with similar tales from their districts. So we're here today

at the second of two hearings on the Susquehanna River Basin

Commission to finish gathering the information from testimony

of the SRBC and affected parties so that we can all go back to

Harrisburg and craft a solution that will bring the SRBC back

to the mission of the original compact of ensuring adequate

water supply without bankrupting our municipalities and driving

up the cost of our local water bills.

Mr. Chairman, thank you again for allowing these

hearings to proceed and bringing this hearing to Shrewsbury

Borough.

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CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, Representative Hill,

for the excellent overview. I appreciate it.

As we start the hearing today, I just wanted to

remind the members and our testifiers --- the testifiers that

we've invited today are the guests of the Committee. And we're

going to treat them as our guests. So we're not here to debate

with our guest testifiers. We're here to gather information

from them. So any interaction with our testifiers, I would ask

respectfully for the members to limit that to questions, not

debate, not that type of engagement. So information gathering

is what we're here for, and we appreciate their time and

appreciate all the members' time in being here today.

As I said, some members may have to leave before the

hearing is over. Don't take that as an indication of anything

other than they have to leave for other business. So I do

appreciate the members' time. And we may have some other

members coming in.

If we have any members that are on the Committee

come in and look for a seat I would ask the members that are

joining us today that are Committee to help them find a seat,

if you would, please. And Representative Dean is here also to

be added to the attendance.

The testifiers will be sitting at the table before

us, so if we could --- I know there's a cell phone there,

there's a coffee cup. If we could get rid of the cell phone

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and --- maybe it's a recording device that somebody has got

there possibly. Whatever the device is, it's before the

microphone, if it's anybody's cell phone, whatever it is, you

might want to gather that. But as our testifiers join us

there, there's water there for the testifiers if you need

additional water, but that table is our testifier table. And

we would ask our first testifier to join us at that table, the

gentleman sitting right behind. You might be able to squeeze

there, so we'll see how it works.

Mr. Andrew Dehoff, Executive Director of the

Susquehanna River Basin Commission. And I would also ask our

testifiers to limit your testimony to seven to eight minutes

and leave the balance of the time of your 15-minute slot for Q

and A with us. If you get to the eight-minute limit, then I

will interrupt you at that point to advise you that your time

is up for testimony and we'll be entering into the Q and A

section of the testimony time so that we can stay on track. We

have a lot of testifiers this morning, busy schedules for

everybody here, and the audience I'm sure also. So thank you

for your time today. Thank you, sir, for joining us, again, we

appreciate it. You can begin when you're ready, sir.

MR. DEHOFF: All right. Thank you, Chairman

Metcalfe, members of the Committee. I will strive to come in

under the seven, eight minutes because I am very interested in

leaving ample time to answer questions and address concerns

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that the Committee members and other representatives have.

But I would like to start off with a few oral

remarks. You do have written testimony that's lengthier, but

I'll just summarize that and also offer some updates from ---

that have occurred since our --- since the previous hearing.

We held a --- one of our Commission's quarterly

business meetings Friday, June 16th, and the Commissioners made

some decisions regarding fees that I think members of this

Committee might be interested in.

First, there was a proposal to increase our

application fees across the board, in accordance with an

increase in the Consumer Price Index. That is a practice that

was put in place by resolution in 2005, but it is not an

automatic increase. The Commissioners actually have to vote on

whether to adopt such increases. This year they decided not

to. They looked at our finances. They looked at the

circumstances in the basin, concerns that have been addressed,

and adopted not to increase fees in accordance with the rise in

the Consumer Price Index.

They also elected to deepen the municipal discount

that municipalities pay on annual fees so that a municipality

with an SRBC permit, instead of paying the standard fee of

$1,050 will pay only $590.

Two quick notes regarding concerns about SRBC

collecting excessive fees from municipalities. I think it's

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important to note that more than 90 percent of our fees come

from not municipalities but from large water users, such as the

energy industry, in particular, power plants in the natural gas

industry.

Second, SRBC spends more money reviewing municipal

applications than what we collect from municipal fees. We're

losing money on municipal oversight, not making money.

Nevertheless, we intend to maintain the discounts we have in

place and to find additional ways to reduce costs to both

municipalities and to the Commission.

Our ability to keep fees steady and in some cases

reduce them is due to strong fiscal responsibility of the

Commission. Like businesses and households across the

Commonwealth, we've been tightening our belt in the wake of

tough economic times.

Since 2010 we've implemented many cost-saving

measures, which are enumerated in my written testimony. There

are just a couple I'll highlight here. We've implemented pay

for performance merit increases for salaries instead of

across-the-board increases. We began requiring employees to

contribute at first ten percent and now recently raised to 15

percent of the cost of their health insurance, which is a

higher rate than the contributions from both state employees

and from state legislators. And we've undertook various

administrative cost-saving measures related to our insurance

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policies, vehicle maintenance, utility contracts, you know,

general administrative and maintenance-type things, to realize

a savings of over $50,000 annually.

Regarding our technical programs, you have heard and

will hear today some allegations that SRBC conducts duplicate

permitting activities. That is simply not true. SRBC and the

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection have two

different purposes for their permits. Where our authorities do

overlap, such as the review of municipal surface water intakes,

DEP takes precedence. SRBC defers to DEP under the terms of

the 1999 Memorandum of Understanding between the two agencies.

SRBC, in that case, does not require submittal of application

or collect any application fees from those municipalities. Any

permit ultimately issued by DEP satisfies SRBC's requirements.

I'll wrap up by committing to a few things. First,

I will respond in writing to the allegations made today and on

the 12th to address any misconceptions or misunderstandings.

One that I want to mention right now was the assertion that the

Commission does not grant waiver requests but rather denies

them and pockets the associated fees.

I asked staff to look at recent history and found

that the Commission received 52 waiver requests since I took

the position of Executive Director and we granted 50 of those.

It's a 90 percent --- 96 percent approval rate.

The second commitment I'll make is to engage

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municipalities and legislators in reviewing and revising our

rules. In addition to the fee decisions, I had a good

discussion with our Commissioners when we last met about the

current set of rules. Particularly those are --- those are

causing concern. They agreed that we should look at those and

are committed to reviewing them and changing them as warranted.

So I look forward on --- to your input on how we can make those

changes, but at the same time ensuring our mutual goals, which

is that towns have the water the residents and need to operate

during times of drought.

Thank you. I'm happy to answer any questions.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, sir. Representative

Ward?

REPRESENTATIVE WARD: Thank you so much for being

here, sir. The last meeting you confirmed that SRBC is not

subject to the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law. The salaries of

your employees are not available to the public and cannot be

obtained under the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law. Are you, as

the Executive Director, committed and willing to provide a copy

of the salaries to the members of the House State Government

Committee, sir?

MR. DEHOFF: We're not subject to the Right to Know

Law, you're right. We have our own access to records policy.

For the past two years members of this committee and other

legislators have requested such financial information and I

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have freely given it without making them go through our access

to records policy. I've already given salary information to

Representative Dush, but I'd be happy to make that available to

the rest of you.

REPRESENTATIVE WARD: That would be appreciated.

Thank you, sir.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Representative Ryan?

REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Sir, again thank you very much

for coming down today. We appreciate your testimony. Do you

have a set of audited financial statements that are done either

under GASB standards or the Financial Accounting Standards

Board and if so, is there a management report that accompanies

it as well that we might be able to get a copy of?

MR. DEHOFF: The Susquehanna River Basin Compact,

which is the legislation that created SRBC, requires an annual

independent audit by a certified accounting firm, so we do ---

we do conduct that annually.

I have provided, when requested, the audits from the

last five years to various members of this Committee, but I

will happily make those available again.

REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: And does that include the

management report as well? There's typically a management

report that includes things such as controlled deficiencies ---

excuse me, suggested deficiencies ---?

MR. DEHOFF: Absolutely, it includes an assessment

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of all our practices and makes recommendations, yeah.

REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, Representative Ryan.

Representative DeLissio.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

In the opening remarks we heard that Shrewsbury needed to

re-permit two of their wells.

MR. DEHOFF: Right.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: And the process has

changed. I believe these were originally permitted almost four

decades ago.

MR. DEHOFF: Right.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: What, Mr. Dehoff, would

you say has changed in those 40 years that has created the

situation whereby I would imagine a lot of local and small

municipalities might be surprised if they've not been through

this process before? What are some of those big changes in the

last 40 years?

MR. DEHOFF: Well, the changes now --- the changes

are that we now require science and data before we'll issue a

permit. The records are very, very spotty, from the '70s and

'80s, which is very unfortunate. It's a mistake that we are

not repeating. We document --- staff documents everything we

do now when we issue a permit. But the reality is that a lot

of towns are relying on old wells that have never been truly

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proven, never put through their paces, if you will, during a

drought. Things change over time. Demands increase. The

little landscape changes. Recharge areas, which is the open

space that, when it rains, allow infiltration to recharge the

aquifer, that's being paved over. Additional wells are being

installed by neighbor --- neighboring municipalities or --- or

landowners so that now you have multiple wells competing for

the same water resources. So a lot of that is unknown. And we

now have standards asking that some of that information be

collected.

In many cases municipalities have not used their

wells at the rate that they were permitted at 40 years ago,

which puts us in a difficult position of saying, well, yes, you

were given a piece of paper that says your well can pump this,

but we have no demonstration that it can do that.

The last thing we want is for a community to find

itself in a drought and expect to rely on a well and find that

it can't --- it can't offer the water they expected. So our

ultimate goal is to have the sources go through the proper

scientific process so that we know and the municipalities know

what they can rely on.

I think the big question is how do we get there? We

took some aggressive steps. There was a rule put in place in

2006 that subjects --- subjects certain unapproved sources to

SRBC oversight. And I think when these renewals began in

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2009/2010 we didn't handle it right. And we've learned some

lessons and I think we have some ideas. We do have some ideas

for how we can change things. But again, I'd like to work with

municipalities to figure out the best way to make that happen

so that we all have the certainty that these sources will serve

residents and businesses during a time of drought.


CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, Representative

DeLissio. And for the members, we do have a number of members

that want to ask questions, so if we could limit our questions

to one. If we have additional time, we can come back for a

second round.

Representative Hill?

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr.

Dehoff, thank you.

I wanted to follow up on a question that

Representative Ward asked, and that is it's one thing for you

to send that information to us as State Representatives, but

really the people who are paying the bills are our taxpayers.

Every other state agency publishes their salaries of

their employees on PennWATCH. Would you be willing to put the

salaries of your staff on PennWATCH?

MR. DEHOFF: Well, you said every other state

agency. Are we a state agency or aren't we?

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Well, that's certainly a

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conversation that we can have, ---

MR. DEHOFF: You've asserted that we're not.

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: --- but what I will say to you

is that you contend that you are for the purposes of paying

salaries, benefits and pensions. So are you or aren't you?

That's something we can have a further conversation about.

Would you be willing to put your salary information

on PennWATCH?

MR. DEHOFF: I'm not familiar with PennWATCH, but I

am familiar with Title 71. For the purposes of a pension, it

identifies us as a state agency. So I think that's a fair

question.

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Are you compliant --- is the

SRBC compliant with the Sunshine Act?

MR. DEHOFF: We're not subject to it.

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: So do I understand correctly,

you are not subject to the Sunshine Act or the Right to Know

Law in Pennsylvania?

MR. DEHOFF: That's correct.

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Thank you.


Representative Daley. Representative Daley is in transition.

She was sitting in for the Minority Chairman, so she'll finish

her question if the Minority Chair doesn't mind and then she'll

move on.

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REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and

thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here, Mr. Dehoff. So I just

wanted to follow up a little bit on Representative DeLissio's

questions. Can you give us examples of what happens when water

supply, water quality, flooding, watershed management are not

regulated so that we ---? I mean, are there any examples that

you can provide to us today?

MR. DEHOFF: Sure. Conflicts inevitably arise, for

one thing. You'll have communities or even states in conflict

with each other and pursuing legal options in court, which

costs everybody a lot of time and money.

If you have no regulation or oversight on pumping of

a well, you can damage the aquifer, which means you can draw

water levels down so low to points where they've never been

drawn before. That exposes the cracks and the fractures that

transmit water to the well, exposes them to air and oxygen that

they've never been exposed to ever, over thousands of years,

which introduces things like bacteria, rust or other chemical

depositions that damage the ability of the well to produce

water.

It can also impact the aquifer at large, which

impacts other users so that they can't rely on the aquifer

anymore. So there are some serious, potentially economic

implications to doing something like that.

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We have a food manufacturing --- or a food

processing facility in the northern part of the basin that

over-pumped some of its wells, introduced water quality issues

and is now scrambling to find replacement sources and backup

sources and supplemental sources at great expense. So you

know, we think it's important that some of those limits --- not

--- not to limit growth, not to limit usage, but to ensure lack

of conflicts and not damaging the water resource itself.

REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, Representative Daley.

Looks like for our last question, Representative Miller.

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A

question for you. Most municipalities state, whatever, homes,

anyone when they have a budget situation, they had money in

certain reserves, they'll move money from one fund to another

fund to cover expenses if money is not being used in that fund.

Are you willing to direct the SRBC, since you have about $40

million in reserves, to supplement other areas of your budget

where you may need funding?

MR. DEHOFF: We already do that.

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you.


Miller. That's all the time we have for Q and A with this

testifier. Thank you, sir, for joining us. Again, we

appreciate it. We look forward to your written statements

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regarding the hearings.

MR. DEHOFF: Absolutely.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Look forward to reviewing those.

Thank you. Our next testifier will be Mr. Thomas Shepstone,

principal from Shepstone Management Company, Incorporated.

Thank you, sir, for joining us today. You can begin

when you're ready, sir.

MR. SHEPSTONE: My ---.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Please make sure that your green

light's on on the microphone there.

MR. SHEPSTONE: Thank you. My name is Tom

Shepstone. I'm a professional planner from northeastern

Pennsylvania. I have over 40 years of experience working with

communities throughout the Commonwealth. I've also represented

numerous private clients, including some in the natural gas

industry.

There's a battle going on for sovereignty in this

country between states and river basin commissions they created

long ago to jointly develop water resources. It's like a scene

out of that old movie 2001, some of you will recall, where a

computer named Hal suddenly assumes control over its makers.

River basin commissions such as the ones created for

the Delaware and Susquehanna River watersheds are accumulating

power to themselves over land use and economic development with

metastasizing regulations and fees that are rendering state

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governments more and more irrelevant, in my opinion.

The Delaware River Basin Compact between the states

of --- is between the States of Delaware, New Jersey, New York

and Pennsylvania and the federal government was signed in '61.

This SRBC Compact between the States of Maryland, New York and

PA and the federal government was signed in 1970.

And I want to point out that the majority of both

commissions are the same individuals, starting with the

governors, of course, and then their DEP or DEC

representatives, the same individuals, and going on down, I

might add, to one person in Pennsylvania whose name was

mentioned earlier today, and that is Kelly Heffner. She is the

SRBC and the DRBC for purposes of Pennsylvania. And she has

been through both Democrat and Republican administrations. And

I think that's an important point to take into account here.

These compacts are also similar in that they're

subject to the same restrictive reservations. And in my

written testimony, I'm not going to read it to you, but you

will see the reservation, which makes it explicitly clear that

these river basin commissions are intended to develop water

resources and ensure water supplies. They're not intended to

be primarily regulators. And that is a key fact that's being

overlooked.

When they --- when the --- when you look at the

compacts, they talk over and over again about projects,

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projects, projects. They don't talk about regulation,

regulation, regulation. But what we're getting is the latter.

And I would point out that the --- it was

anticipated when these river basin commissions were formed that

they would work together to develop water resources to meet the

needs of growing regions with competing demands for water, and

it was expected they'd keep their nose out of state business

while facilitating cooperative development in new projects.

There's no indication of intent to give the SRBC or

the DRBC control over every water resource. If no joint

funding is involved, in fact, these river basin commissions are

legislatively directed to stay out of the way. They have no

authority to pursue projects which are not necessarily

cooperative, and yet they're regulating more and more of our

daily lives, as you've heard in testimony earlier.

They're effectively using water use as well as

development by imposing fees on consumption to support their

bureaucracies. They are, slowly but surely, extending their

control into land use by requiring permits for any amount of

water use in the SRBC region if it's connected to natural gas

development and prohibiting such development in the DRBC region

by imposing an effective moratorium while pretending to engage

in development of regulations with no end in sight after seven

years.

The word projects has now come to mean review and

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regulation. And I would note that the Executive Director

testified before that he lost money on reviews. Well, the

obvious retort is maybe you're spending too much time on

reviews. And I think that's --- that's what needs to be said

here.

The sovereignty of the states themselves is being

erased bit by bit as these river basin commissions grab more

power and establish themselves as overlords over the states.

Worst of all, it's been done with the acquiescence

of two states, New York and Pennsylvania, who seem only too

pleased to surrender their own authority so they don't have to

make decisions themselves.

Such cowardice is to be expected from New York,

where special interest politics is the only form known and the

DEC Commissioner is a puppet of those interests, but we haven't

traditionally operated that way in Pennsylvania, at least not

yet.

It's time for the DEP to start protecting the rights

of all Pennsylvania --- Pennsylvanians from these power-thirsty

river basin commissions. And I would like to see the

legislature withhold funding, particularly from the DRBC, from

these agencies so that --- until they start behaving. They are

out of control, particularly the DRBC, where I come from, and I

think they should not be given another dime, that's my opinion,

until they start behaving. So thank you very much.

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CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, sir, for joining us

today.

Representative Dush? Representative Hill?

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Mr. Shepstone, thank you for

your testimony. Two years ago I made that request for the

Susquehanna River Basin Commission, and Chairman Adolph at the

time reduced their funding a hundred thousand dollars.

We subsequently made that same request for this ---

this budget cycle as well. What we were told at the last

hearing by Mr. Dehoff was that a decision was made that --- for

the SRBC where actually 37 percent of all funding would be

coming from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, ---

MR. SHEPSTONE: Right.

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: --- reducing the funding costs

for the other states. It struck me that we still only have a

quarter of the representation but we're spending 37 percent for

the funding, you know, which we fought a revolution for

taxation without representation. So I have significant

concerns about us continuing to provide the lion's share of the

funding and only having limited --- a smaller proportion of

representation. Is that happening as well at the DRBC?

MR. SHEPSTONE: Yes, it is. And I'm so glad you

brought that out because the --- in fact, Pennsylvania has been

carrying the lion's share there as well. And New York has

never met its share, never, in recent memory. The federal

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government doesn't meet its share. And the other states, New

Jersey and Delaware, I believe it periodically reduced their

shares as well.

Now, sometimes this has been due to, you know,

budget crises at individual states and that's understandable

during a recession, perhaps, but there's no question that

Pennsylvania has been repeatedly taken advantage of by --- by a

bureaucratic regional agency that wants to take away its

sovereignty. And it's time for the Commonwealth to stand up.

And I'm, frankly, annoyed that we have the same

representative through Democrat and Republican administrations

always representing us on those two commissions, and I'm not

convinced we're getting good representation. And I want to say

that for the record.

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Mr. Chairman, may I follow up?

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: We have other members that have

questions.

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Representative DeLissio?


Thank you, Mr. Shepstone.

You had mentioned that you've observed this work

closely with, both, I guess, river basin commissions over the

last number of years. Do you think the regulatory process, if

controlled by the states or the states were more involved,

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would it anticipate a different outcome?

MR. SHEPSTONE: I ---.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: Do you see efforts as

duplicative or just in the wrong place?

MR. SHEPSTONE: I do because I think the --- I don't

think it originally was that way. I think it was originally

pretty much as the Executive Director outlined. I thought

there was a deference.

But I think it's evolved over the years to where

there's less deference and it's gone the other way. And as

I've seen the state agencies, and I've been in meetings with

the state agencies on representing different clients, where you

know, they'll say, well, we have to --- you know, we have to

check with the --- you know, the River Basin Commission on

this.

And --- and I --- there is a --- there is a

deference going the other way now. That's the way I see it and

others may see it differently, but I think we've --- we've sort

of turned a corner, and it's not a good corner to have turned.



DeLissio.

Representative Dush?

REPRESENTATIVE DUSH: Thank you, Chairman. Mr.

Shetler --- or Shepstone, sorry, I want to thank you. You

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brought up something that's been a keystone, a part of what I'm

doing in the House, the state's legislative and executive ---

the sovereignty of the legislatures. I've seen this on the

legislators for decades now abrogating that responsibility to

the executive branch, and now we have it apparently with the

SRBC.

We created the federal government, we created these

compacts, and yet somehow they say that they're not subject to

us. Could you expand a little bit on some of the areas where

you see them usurping the legislative sovereignty of the

Commonwealth?

MR. SHEPSTONE: Yes. I'll give a couple examples.

In the DRBC case, what's happened is they're gradually trying

to get into land use issues. And for example, they're now

saying that because of the --- there's a pipeline that's the

Penn East Pipeline, which is supposed to go underneath the

Delaware River, that that somehow makes that a water supply

issue. It does not. A pipeline does not --- has nothing to do

with water supply. And --- and this is a pure caving in to

political special interests and it should not happen.

In the case of the SRBC --- and again, I want to say

in defense of the SRBC that they have been --- you know, they

have at least developed regulations for gas drilling and at

least have been, you know, pretty reasonable overall on it, but

the --- for them to say that any amount of water use when it

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comes to gas drilling makes it a water project, are you

kidding? This is a clear intrusion into the authority of the

states, and it has nothing to do with regional water resource

planning. So I think both of them have abused their

privileges.

REPRESENTATIVE DUSH: Thank you. Thank you,

Chairman.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, Representative Dush.

For follow-up, Representative Hill?

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Thank you again, Mr.

Shepstone.

In prior testimony the SRBC has contended that if we

reduce our appropriation to them, that they will, in turn,

raise the fees that are imposed on our businesses and

municipalities. Do you believe that to be true?

MR. SHEPSTONE: I doubt it. That is --- that's not,

you know, been the pattern in many other cases, for sure. And

in fact, if they have $40 million of reserves, I don't think

they need to. But I --- you know, that seems to always be the

answer that's given when it comes down to money, that somehow

they need that --- that money. And I noticed in the case of

the DRBC that when they were lobbying, they even went to

special interest environmental groups like the Delaware River

Keeper, which is also operating in the SRBC region and across

the entire Commonwealth. They went to them to beg them to

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lobby you folks to get --- to get the money. That's --- that's

wrong, you know. And again, it's time for Pennsylvania to grab

the reins of these agencies. Thank you.



Representative Daley? We still have further

questions, sir.

MR. SHEPSTONE: I'm sorry. I apologize. I wasn't

trying to get away.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you. As long as you're

--- as long as you're okay with answering a couple more

questions.

MR. SHEPSTONE: Sure. Sure. Absolutely.

REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: Mr. Shepstone, thank you for

being here today. I have a question related. Part of my

understanding of why these compacts or the Delaware River Basin

Commission was founded was because of disputes between --- or

overuse of water possibly between New York and Pennsylvania and

New Jersey and Pennsylvania suits the Supreme Court decided.

MR. SHEPSTONE: Yep.

REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: And, but there's also --- you

read all the time about western states that are having water

disputes and there's droughts and ---.

MR. SHEPSTONE: Yeah.

REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: So it seems --- my

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understanding of it, and granted I'm here to learn today, is

that the compacts actually seem to help when you have multiple

states. Rivers don't stay in one place. They start in one

state, end up --- go through other states. Exactly what we

have here. Do you have any comments on that being actually a

good way of going about it instead of tying things up in the

courts?

MR. SHEPSTONE: I do. And I agree with everything

you've said. The --- again, I'm a little bit more familiar

with the DRBC on this, but that was --- and you cited that.

And that is a perfect example of why some of these river basin

commissions were formed.

The Delaware River Compact was formed almost out of

necessity to deal with, you know, a court issue that just

wasn't being resolved. And I think it was appropriate to do it

that way. And I would --- and I would urge some of you, and if

any of you want to see it, I'll be happy to provide it, to go

back to the --- some of the speech making by Jim Wright, the

first Executive Director of the DRBC when it was formed. And

he clearly articulated what was the policy of that agency for

many decades, probably its first three-and-a-half decades at

least, maybe four, under multiple Executive Directors, that

they were, in fact, about doing that very thing. They were

about dealing with water resource planning on a cooperative

basis and trying to avoid court disputes. And they did a

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pretty darn good job of it for a long time.

And I think at a certain point, the DRBC's case ---

it was when Carol Collier became the Executive Director, it

went off on an entirely different mission. And I think that's

when things started to go awry. And if we can get back --- and

I recall --- I've worked with the DRBC. I brought them into

--- when we had discussions of the Upper Delaware National

Scenic and Recreation River, I urged bringing in the DRBC to

that because they were a competent agency.

I would not do that today. It --- it ended up being

--- it went in a wrong direction at a certain point, and it's

unfortunate. And I think they need to get back to the mission

--- back to the core mission, which was how you described it.

REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: Thank you. Can I just have a

very quick follow-up?

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: Thanks, Mr. Chairman. So my

only --- and this is a comment. It's great to think that we

can go back, but the problem is there's a lot of things we'd

have to go back. And I guess that's where my question would

be. We didn't have the natural gas industry to the extent back

when these commissions were formed, and so the water management

seems to me to be more complicated than it might have been back

when some of these were formed where it was just about water

management. Am I completely off track with that or am I on

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track?

MR. SHEPSTONE: Well, I think it assumes that

there's some special problem with natural gas drilling. It is

--- there's not. They use --- they withdraw water. They're a

large water user, of course. But so are golf courses. So are

many other uses. And those have always been accommodated

without, you know, these kinds of struggles and the hyperbole.

And I think it's unfortunate that it was treated differently.

The way it should be handled, we should be looking

at the water withdrawals, the water disposal, just like we do

for anything else, and have --- if it's over, you know, the

hundred thousand gallons or whatever that threshold is that

makes it, you know, a large, impactful thing, then, of course,

we should be looking at that, but not treating it --- we

shouldn't be targeting one industry. And I didn't come here

today to represent the industry. I came here in a more general

concern. But I think we need to, you know, stop targeting

industries because that's the politically correct thing to do

and get back to the --- again, the core mission, regulate

everybody the same and keep it to allocating those water

resources, which was what it's supposed to be about.

REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: Thank you.

MR. SHEPSTONE: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, Representative Daley.

For our final question, Representative Keefer?

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REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: You said you have private

clients as well as ---?

MR. SHEPSTONE: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: What's your experience with

fines?

MR. SHEPSTONE: With fines?

REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Yes. Is there any

consistency to those? I mean, in my research I have found they

seem to be all over the board.


REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Some are very egregious.

Some are nominal.


REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: And it doesn't seem to

pertain to waters that have been affected or administrative

technical errors.

MR. SHEPSTONE: Yeah. It's interesting because I've

done some analysis of that with respect to the gas industry,

and it is, it's all over the map. I don't quite understand the

philosophy. Sometimes it seems like what's happening is

there's a fine imposed initially to be able to say we did

something, and then later on, you know, it's modified based on

the facts, you know. So that's what I've observed. And it

seems like there should be more consistency, to be honest with

you.

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Keefer. Thank you, sir, for your testimony.

MR. SHEPSTONE: Thank you. I am excused now?

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you. Now you're excused.

Thank you. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate it.

Thanks for entertaining a few extra questions there.

Our next testifier is Mr. Pete Ramsey, President PA

Turfgrass Council, Grounds Manager, Messiah College,

agronomist, Range End Golf Club.

We did hear from you, sir, at the previous hearing,

and ---

MR. RAMSEY: I did.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: --- I understand that there's

some additional golf courses here in this region that you also

work with.

MR. RAMSEY: Thank you to the Committee for inviting

me back. This is a much more intimate setting than what we had

at Susquehanna University, but thank you to Shrewsbury,

nonetheless.

I am President of the Pennsylvania Turfgrass

Council, Director of Grounds for Messiah College and

superintendent of Range End Golf Club. I am here representing

the golf course and the turfgrass community.

I would like to say before I read my testimony that

we are collectively the smallest group of consumptive users.

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To kind of --- a counterpoint of Mr. Shepstone's comment about

natural gas and golf, we do not compare to the amount of water

that the natural gas industry uses.

With me today are members of the Pennsylvania Golf

Course Owners Association. We have golf course owners

represented here today. And some of the best golf course

superintendents in the entire state are here today.

The --- in the last two weeks I've been contacted by

a lot of people about this issue. And again, I would like to

reiterate that no two dockets or issues with the SRBC are the

same. They are all unique unto themselves and each one of them

comes with its own set of challenges and problems.

That being said, my testimony is as follows.

Stories of hardship continue to come forward since more light

is being shed on the consumptive user issue. Superintendents,

owners, hydrogeologists are operating under duress in their

attempts for approvals. In the last two weeks I have received

numerous letters and emails from those grateful for these

hearings but refusing to participate for fear of retribution.

One hydrogeologist stated to me that his clients

felt like they were being treated like criminals and that some

SRBC staff even struggled with enforcing their very rules.

What other organization requires full payment up front and then

takes more than a year to review? What has happened in the

last 20 years that so many professionals are so reluctant to

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step forward? Nothing other than our costs and requirements

have multiplied while SRBC defaulted on their mission of

storage. There was never any storage built into the basin or

protective --- protection for consumptive users. The only

tangible evidence of progress the SRBC has is their

headquarters that overlooks the river.

We are victims of abiding by the law if what they

are even doing has any legal merit. Their standard operating

procedure is absent of any due process for us. Most of us have

enough Notices of Violation to wallpaper our offices. The

certified letters always include the threat of civil penalties.

No other organization compares to this.

If you move my facility 75 miles east to the

Delaware River Basin, the cost for a ten-year docket to be

reapproved is $1,600 versus the $23,600 that I would be facing

here in the Susquehanna River Basin. Consumptive use is eight

cents versus 33 cents here. Annual monitoring fee is $300

versus $1,150. DRBC also has no evaporation calculation. They

have no aquifer testing on previously-permitted wells versus a

72-hour pump test or a $5,100 waiver.

Annual costs of operating over the life of the

respective dockets in my situation would be $1,270 versus

$6,023 in the Susquehanna. I could understand if DRBC were a

relatively new commission, but they were founded ten years

before SRBC. They are the only other organization in

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Pennsylvania similar to SRBC, yet they pale in comparison.

In a drought emergency, when the Commission's work

is most needed, their authority is superseded by DEP. We are

left with a self-governing commission who answers to no one,

operates under a false narrative about storage and water

quality, have unprecedented operating procedures and fee

schedules, no accountability that most state and federal

agencies have, with plaintiffs who are now too scared to

testify. We are left with nowhere to turn.

If our properties were converted to sod farms or

cornfields we would not require dockets. Our municipalities

zone us as agricultural, yet the Commission says we are not.

We receive absolutely no credit for the storm water our

facilities filter or store or the water waste that we help to

purify. There is no effort made to help our facilities stay in

business.

I would argue that the Commission has exchanged its

moral compass for a monetary one. Article I, Section 1.3-2 of

the compact states, the water resources of the basin are

subject to the sovereign rights and responsibilities of the

signatory parties. And it is the purpose of this compact to

provide for a joint exercise of these powers of sovereignty in

the common interest of the people of the region.

I have nothing but personal respect for Mr. Dehoff

and the staff of the SRBC. They believe in the mission that

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they are trying to move --- in their mission and trying to move

the organization forward, to which they have done an

outstanding job. I imagine it takes a lot of fees and a lot of

fines to support what that organization has grown into.

However, I am filled with professional animosity at the

arrogance that thinks we will sit back and do nothing. What

happens if I stop paying my fees? Will they shut down my pump

station and change the locks on the doors to it or will they

drag me into court? Water is not a weapon to be formed against

me or my colleagues for prosper. God is the only one who can

add water to my facility, and I'm pretty sure that they are not

him.

If Mr. Dehoff is correct in what he said that

roughly 90 percent of the Commission's revenue comes from

consumptive users larger than --- than us in the turfgrass

community, most --- I believe he said the energy community, the

energy producers, that leaves ten percent of their revenue, of

which we are probably a fraction.

I'm done beating the dead horse about this issue. I

think everybody understands what the problem is. But I'll

offer a solution. Some of their practices with us are already

redundant. We all report through Act 220 reporting to DEP our

annual water usage. And when water matters most and we go into

a drought emergency, DEP does supersede the SRBC with

regulation. They are the ones that can put the police on our

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doorsteps during a drought emergency if someone in the

community feels that we are in violation.

I would offer that we could easily move turfgrass

consumptive use and golf and recreational fields under DEP.

Thank you.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, sir. We appreciate

you joining us in the second hearing. Your testimony was good

at the first one and excellent again today. I appreciate it.

MR. RAMSEY: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Our first question would be from

Representative Ryan.

REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Mr. Ramsey, thank you for

being here. I have a PHD working at a golf course. I

understand. Stands for posthole digger. So that's how I got

my way through college. So I thank you for doing this. I

think what I'm most concerned about is the sovereignty issues

and the lack of accountability with the Right to Know Laws.

But let me ask you the specific question about the

impact of the Corps of Engineers in this process and who is

somewhat of the governing body. As a retired Marine Colonel,

the Posse Comitatus Act prevents U.S. military personnel from

having an active role on U.S. soil with U.S. citizens. So I'm

curious about the extent to which the Army Corps of Engineers

has a role in this particular issue with the Commission.

MR. RAMSEY: I personally have only dealt with the

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Commission and DEP when it comes to water use on my facility.

I don't know if there's anyone else present that has had the

Army Corps of Engineers get involved. I don't know.

REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: So you have not seen them and

the regulation is not coming or the information is not coming

from them, it's coming from the SRBC only?

MR. RAMSEY: Correct.

REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Thank you.


Representative DeLissio.


Good to see you again, Mr. Ramsey.


REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: In your testimony you talk

about plaintiffs who are too scared to testify. Do you truly

mean folks who have brought a lawsuit and then don't follow

through.

MR. RAMSEY: No. I consider --- I consider myself

and consumptive users to be somewhat in a plaintiff role in

this issue.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: Got it. So sort of an

aggrieved party, if you will?

MR. RAMSEY: Yes. But there's an overwhelming

sentiment from a lot of people who would like to tell their

story and --- but are concerned that, if they do, as they go

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through the --- you know, the permitting process, that it could

muddy the waters for them, so to speak.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: Could bite them. I come

out of long-term care, very, very heavily regulated industry,

so I understand what you're saying with that. It's not only

--- in all fairness to all parties, it's not --- it's the

concern that there could be --- somebody else has the upper

hand in the process versus --- and I'm dealing with this now

actually with former colleagues in terms of long-term care, so

I --- it's just the concern that by intervening in the process

so hearings such as this give you that opportunity then to

weigh-in in more comfortable manners. Is that correct?

MR. RAMSEY: And in defense of Mr. Dehoff and the

Commission, I don't think any of us know of a case where there

was, you know, direct conflict or --- or duress inflicted on

somebody to the point that they could say, you know, I was not

granted a waiver. But we've been dealing with this issue, some

of us, over 25 years, have gone through the permit --- the

re-permitting process or trying to go through it. A lot of us

are coming up on it. And there's a long-term relationship here

of difficulties that are making people feel like what is the

point and I might not --- I don't --- I don't need them on my

property any more than they already are. We already have

inspections that are ridiculous.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: And Mr. Ramsey, is there

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any type of advisory group to the Commission made up of, for

instance, members of your council? Some agencies do have

consumer, if you will, advisory groups and those pave the way

for that type of communication that perhaps doesn't seem to be

in place now. Is there such an advisory group affiliated with

the Commission?

MR. RAMSEY: No. No, there's not. We did ask the

Commission to sit down and meet with us several months ago, I

believe back in January, which they were gracious enough to

host a meeting for us as consumptive users at headquarters.

And they --- they did listen to the things that we are going

through and I know that they are always willing to meet with

consumptive users on an individual basis about their dockets,

but I don't believe that it's effected any change for anyone.


Thank you, Mr. Ramsey.


DeLissio. Representative Miller?

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and

thank you, Mr. Ramsey. Could you, for the sake of those here

in this room and others who may be watching, repeat your

testimony about how you get charged for withdrawal of water and

then get charged for evaporation and that whole process? I

think that'd be educational for many who might see this.

MR. RAMSEY: That was part of my first testimony.

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There are several types of withdrawals. There's groundwater

withdrawals, which are --- is water from wells, surface water

withdrawals, which is water from surface sources, like creeks,

rivers, streams. And then there's our consumptive use, which

is the water that is actually going through our pump stations

out into our facilities.

If you have been doing those things and those things

predate at your facility regulation, and I forget the dates,

but the three specific dates of those things, then you're

grandfathered a certain amount. But at certain facilities

evaporation plays into those things.

For instance, at Messiah College, we buy water,

public water, from Suez Water, which used to be American United

Water. It's an entirely public water source. It comes into

the college. It's used for all of our potable water and our

heating and cooling systems. But naturally through heating and

cooling there's evaporation. We have seven cooling towers. We

were made to install meters on those cooling towers, which

could read the amount of water coming in and then the amount of

water blow-down which can contribute to evaporation. And then

we have to pay for that evaporation. So essentially we're

almost paying three times for the same gallon of water. We pay

a public water source. We then pay a percentage for the sewer.

And then we pay for the evaporation. In our world, having to

pay for evaporation, whether through heating and cooling

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sources or irrigation, is money going up in smoke.

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: One quick follow-up

question. So if we get a rainstorm with one, two, three, four

inches or so, do we get any credit for that?

MR. RAMSEY: No, sir.

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.


Miller. Final question from Representative Moul, please.

REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsey. Curiosity, you heard that --- that the

SRBC has $40 million in the bank and part of what they had

claimed its use for is for water storage upstate in times of

drought. When we were low on rainfall, has the SRBC ever come

to you and said --- or any of your members and said we're going

to put water in your wells because we're charging you as an

insurance policy, and I quote them, in times of drought that

you have water supply? Do you see any way that they can float

water down the Susquehanna into any of your wells or do they

offer anything to truck water in? Is there any way to make

good on their promise in times of drought since you're paying

for that insurance policy?

MR. RAMSEY: No, sir. There's only one entity that

can put water on my facility, and I think we all know who it

is.

REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: But you're paying for that

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water storage as part of your fees?

MR. RAMSEY: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Thank you. Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, Representative Moul.

Thank you, sir, for your testimony. I appreciate it.


CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Our next testifier will be Mr.

Richard Buchanan. He's the President of the Shrewsbury Borough

Council. And thank you for hosting us here at your facility

today, sir.

MR. BUCHANAN: Well, good morning. I do go by the

name of Buck.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, Buck. We're ready

for your testimony when you're ready, sir.

MR. BUCHANAN: All right. I've been in this borough

hall for I think 27 or 28 years. And in that period of time I

have never seen anything more abusive to our taxpayers than

what we're encountering from SRBC.

Now, Kristin Phillips-Hill did a great introduction

for you. I know she's read my four pages. I would ask all of

you please to go back and read these four pages that I have in

here. She stole some of my thunder, but I still take up my

eight or nine minutes. I could have you here for eight days to

tell you some horror stories.

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As a small borough, under 4,000 people, we've been

forced to expend moneys way beyond what should be practical.

To meet those demands we've had to increase our rates three

times. We've been trying to build a fund to keep replacing our

old waterlines. We know at some point in time the federal

government is going to say you've got to get rid of those

asbestos lines and all these others, so we've been trying to be

proactive. Every time we turn around we keep seeing what was

budgeted for one purpose having to be spent elsewhere.

And my pages here tell you, in meeting the

requirement to know the depth of the water in the well on a

daily basis, we had to spend just under $150,000. Now, we

don't care about the depth of the water on a daily basis.

We've been using these two wells --- well, two separate issues.

We've been using these wells for over 40-some years. They

supplied us the water we've needed for those 40-some years even

when we had that drought many, many years ago. But yet we went

through this cost to be able to read that data on a daily

basis.

And I want you to ask SRBC, now that you have the

data, what do you do with it? Of what value is it to have that

kind of data? If they want to collect a database for the

entire State of Pennsylvania or the Susquehanna Basin, that's

fine, but you're making us --- you're making me force my

taxpayers to fund that.

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This is a small town. We are not on the Susquehanna

River. We draw 100 percent of our water from wells, and yet,

we, too, are a contributor to their $40 million reserve, but we

have nothing to do with Susquehanna River as far as water usage

goes, all right, nothing whatsoever.

The other factor for permitting these two wells,

again, that took a hundred and --- roughly $142,000 to get two

wells permitted. Now, the old well process used to be every 30

years. They cut it in half. Can you imagine then if we spent

$142,000 for these two wells, got another five to go through,

as to what that cost is for our taxpayers. All right.

The main question or the main concern I have is how

they forced us to go through a process and basically ignored

it. By their requirements we hired a PA-licensed hydrologist.

We went through that 40 --- or 72-hour pump test. We did all

that processing, submitted that data. They received the data.

They found no fault in the work done by our hydrologist and yet

they still cut back our water allocation for that well. So if

you're going to ignore the data and you can't find fault with

it, why have us spend that money?

You're not going to want to hear this, but I'm going

to tell it to you. You can cut their funding to zero, to

absolute zero, the million dollars the fed used to give has

been gone for years now; right? You could cut your state

funding to zero and with what they have in fines, not just

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costs for --- God put some water in the well and yet we pay

SRBC to take it out --- but what they're doing to not us so

much, we haven't been fined yet, but when we went down to one

of their quarterly meetings in Baltimore, they spent like half

an hour reading out all the fines. And I got to say for the

Messiah College guy they were talking about all the fines to

the golf courses and they spent about three minutes on the

annual budget.

And that budget --- I looked at it, now a year out

of date. I've been fighting this with SRBC for over

two-and-a-half years. I looked at their records from 2006 to

2014. They had an increase in their budgeting of 62 percent.

And at that time they had a $30 million reserve. Now, I

understand from the others that have done the homework they're

up to $40 million reserve.

A point I want to get across to you. You were sort

of hoodwinked, whether you were in office then or not, but

somebody sold to the state legislature that you can have SRBC

do the work to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and clean up the

Susquehanna River and you can allow the municipalities to pay

for it. So you're sitting in Shrewsbury Borough with our 4,000

residents and we're paying it. We're paying more than our fair

share.

As you drove down through York County today, we're

surrounded by Shrewsbury Township, more than twice our

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population. What do they pay toward the cleanup of the

Delaware --- I mean, the Susquehanna River? Nothing because

they don't have a public water system. So we are being

punished for having a public water system. We are their source

for money. And yet you have others --- actually a lot of

farmers that probably do more pollution than anybody else with

the cow and dairy herds, and yet they're paying nothing because

they're on their own private wells.

If I wanted to be an SOB I could tell my citizens

get rid of --- we're going to get rid of our public water

system and go back to individual wells. Would that be of any

benefit for the system? Obviously, the answer is no. But yet

you're punishing us for doing a good job.

My other point to you, assuming you still read all

of my four pages, the other point is SRBC clearly operates on

the premises that you are guilty until proven innocent. Guilty

until proven innocent.

One of the new things they're talking about is how

they want to start regulating the water loss and so forth.

Whether you know it or not, your state regulation allows

municipalities or water systems to have up to a 15-percent

water loss, and yet SRBC is looking at how they can start

processes for changing that down.

This particular borough is at four percent, so why

should we be forced to go into a whole new process on governing

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our water loss when we're at four percent? All right.

This issue of always being guilty and proving your

innocence is just insanity.

Let me do a quick look over my own sets of notes to

see --- oh, another factor here for you.

I heard how there were just so few or very high

percentage of waivers. When they went to reduce our well

permit, for what was proven hydraulically to be acceptable and

they reduced it anyway, we wanted to go through and file for a

waiver. We started that process. We contacted a lawyer in

York and we started all that.

The board of three, per their written regulations,

is two members from SRBC and one member representing us. Two

for their side and one for us. And then the real clincher,

folks, is in their own regulations it states that if that board

determines the application was frivolous, they can back charge

us for their legal fees. Now, is that the American justice

system? I served 33 years in uniform. Sorry, not a Marine.

Thirty-three (33) years in uniform, defending against our

enemies. You know, right now I'm willing and this entire

council is willing to tell you we'll speak up. We are not

going to sit back and be quiet when we see this kind of abuse

to what our taxpayers have to put out.

So you've got it. Read my memos and shoot your

questions.

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CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, sir. And we had a

request from our host, from our IT folks. If you're here today

and you're connecting to the Wi-Fi, if you can shut that Wi-Fi

off, then they'll would be able to stream this better than

what's occurring. It's slowing --- bogging down the signal

right now for streaming the hearing. If you have your phone on

Wi-Fi, if you could shut it off, we'd appreciate the help

there.

Representative Dush?

REPRESENTATIVE DUSH: Thank you, Chairman. And

thank you, Buck. I have one quick question. One of the things

that keeps recurring here is the lack of ability for either

local governments --- the previous testifier is on the private

side --- to actually get information back.

Now, we heard from the Executive Director that

they're not subject to the Pennsylvania Right to Know Act.

Have you made any attempts through the federal Freedom of

Information Act or have they told you in any way in which

there's any kind of method for the Borough to actually obtain

records to help you with your defense?

MR. BUCHANAN: Yes, sir. Now, I did it through

Kristin Phillip-Hill's office. Thank you. But I have their

--- I first did it on their budget from 2006 to 2014. And then

I realized, okay, we all have budgets with what we'd like to

do. I shouldn't be working on just the budgets. I should get

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back to their audits. So yes, I was able to obtain their

audits from 2006 to 2014, and I spent days going through those.

That's where I came back --- now, I'm out of date, but that's

where I came back. If they're charging us user fees that are

proportional to what they're doing for us, how do they build up

a $30 million reserve? And again, I go back to my citizens are

contributing to a $30 million reserve. Doesn't make sense. We

don't put --- we don't take any water out of the Susquehanna

River.

REPRESENTATIVE DUSH: Thank you.


Representative Hill?

REPRESENTATIVE HILL: Well, since I've already

stolen your thunder, I'll try and throw you a soft ball, Buck.

Could you expand on what all of these requirements and the cost

of these requirements have done to your local municipal water

bill?

MR. BUCHANAN: Yes. I did say that we've --- we've

raised the rates three times in the last seven years. And

that's not an easy thing to do, but I do it with a free

conscious because we need those moneys. And we know that we've

got to be replacing the waterlines.

These breaks, we've been --- you know, I bragged

about four percent. Bryan Sweitzer back here is the guy that

really deserves it because he's the guy that's out there at two

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o'clock in the morning rather than going at eight o'clock, when

it's convenient or whatever. We've got good people. We're a

small little borough and we're a family and we get great work

from our people.

But we want to build a reserve toward replacing

waterlines both from the asbestos standpoint and from the

breakage standpoint, but we keep losing what we thought we're

budgeting here and having to spend it elsewhere based on some

of these demands by SRBC.

And I didn't say it in the beginning. I have full

respect for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay and the Susquehanna

River. Absolutely respect that. And I have not had any

personal challenges. I think they're professional people in

SRBC. But it's the big picture that seems to have been lost.

My way of expressing this to you is you put the fox

in charge of security for the hen house, and you're scratching

your head wondering where all the hens are going. It just

isn't working the way it's being done.



Representative DeLissio?


Buck, I'm Pam, how are you?

MR. BUCHANAN: Good morning.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: Good morning. Can you

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give me an idea of what that average water bill was both seven

years ago and what it is today, just ballpark, and if it's a

monthly bill, a quarterly bill?

MR. BUCHANAN: I can't give you a direct answer on

those comparisons. I just never thought anybody would ask

that. But let me talk to you a little bit of what we do and

how, because it highlights a fault here.

If so much of this interest is in saving the bay or

getting more good, clean water down the Susquehanna River,

there's no emphasis on reducing water consumption that I see

from SRBC.

What we do and we've done it --- I couldn't even

tell you how many years ago, we actually have an inverted curve

for our water bill. The people that use more water pay a

higher cost per gallon than those that use less. Instead of

the idea that the more you use, the cheaper it is per gallon,

we do it intentionally inversely. And the impact that we've

had on that is that --- let's say in the last five, six years,

what little growth we've had because of the stagnation of the

economy. We are still now using less water than we did five or

six years ago. Now, some of that can be, you know, if you

don't have any broken water pipes, then you know, you can draw

out less as well. But our water bills are punitive to those

that are high users. And that's been intentional. We've done

it. I can't --- with maybe one exception, we've never had

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anyone come in and complain about it. We do have extremely

good water rates, but they've gone up again those three ---

three times we've had to increase it.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: Well, perhaps

Representative Hill's office could aid me in getting that data.

MR. BUCHANAN: Okay.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: Thank you.


DeLissio. Final question from Representative Moul.


Thank you, Buck. I appreciate your testimony. You're one of

the first people after East Berlin that I talked to at

Representative Hill's office. And at the time you told us a

story about you had a grandfathered well or two. And in order

to get a waiver or something you had to give up the

grandfathering on it. Can you expound on that just a little

bit and why you think that was done?

MR. BUCHANAN: Well, again, one of the things I want

to get across to the entire Committee is you've allowed SRBC to

write their own regulations and they're very self-serving. In

that regulation, and I can't tell you the number, but that

regulation states that before they could allow us, even when

proven through all that 72-hour pump testing and $141,000 that

the well could produce more water, their regulation states, no,

we can't increase that because you have two wells that are

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grandfathered.

Now, a grandfathered well is a well that was

permitted through State DEP before SRBC got into this business.

They want --- to increase one well they expect us to give up

that grandfathered clause for two more wells. Well, that would

be asking --- that clearly is asking us then to increase the

well authorization at one well by losing two grandfathered

wells would cost us at least $141,000. What a deal that is;

right?

We were smart enough to say hell no to that. But

you know, it's back again. Why is that in that regulation? If

the well can produce more water, and we've proved it having

spent that money, why aren't we giving that well that higher

number? But again, it's their regulations.

They're good people, but they have no flexibility at

all. And regulations --- we all have to follow orders and

regulations, but there's no allowance. I mean, a simple

example here. Many years ago we closed down every well in this

borough. Now, you talk about fortitude to upset your

constituents. There were I think 32 private wells in our

borough. We talked about that for like 12 years. And then

finally one year I guess I woke up and said, you know, it's got

to be done. So we went through and we closed those 32 wells in

our borough. So there's no individual wells within this

jurisdiction. But the SRBC requirement when you go to do a

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72-hour test requires you to send a letter of notification

within a certain diameter radius. We asked for a waiver.

These people don't have wells. Why should we send them a

letter notifying them about this testing that's going to be

done that can't impact a well they don't have. They wouldn't

grant us that waiver. They couldn't.

REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Just to finish up ---.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Representative Moul, that's all

the time we have for this testifier. Thank you, sir.

MR. BUCHANAN: Get out of here, huh?

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, sir, for your

testimony. We appreciate it.

MR. BUCHANAN: Thank you. Hope to see you again.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, sir.

Our next testifier is Mr. Peter Luscairdi, Authority

Chairman from Middlesex Township Municipal Authority, and

Donald Geistwhite, Jr., Authority Treasurer, Middlesex Township

Municipal Authority, Chairman, Middlesex Township Supervisor.

Gentlemen, you can join us at the microphone. And

whoever is ready to start, when you're ready, you can begin

you're ready. Thank you for joining us today.

MR. GEISTWHITE: Mr. Chairman and Committee, let me

first say that at the very last minute Mr. Luscairdi has been

unavailable to attend, so you get me and our Township Municipal

Authority Manager, Roy Morrison.

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And first let me apologize. This is my first week

with my new trifocals, so if I stumble through this, you'll

understand why.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Can you both introduce

yourselves, then?

MR. GEISTWHITE: Excuse me?

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Can you both introduce

yourselves again for us, your names, ---

MR. GEISTWHITE: Yes. I'm Don ---.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: --- and spell them for us.

MR. GEISTWHITE: I'm Donald S. Geistwhite, Jr.,

G-E-I-S-T-W-H-I-T-E, Jr. I'm Township Supervisor Chairman and

Treasurer of the Authority.

MR. MORRISON: And Roy L. Morrison. I'm the

Authority Manager, Middlesex Township.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: And the spelling of your last

name, sir?

MR. MORRISON: It's M-O-R-R-I-S-O-N.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, sir. Thank you both.

MR. GEISTWHITE: Mr. Chairman and members of the

Committee, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you

for allowing us to present our testimony on behalf of the water

customers of Middlesex Township.

We will attempt to summarize 12 groundwater wells

developed --- development plan that began in 2004 and has

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really never ended.

To this date, we continue to conduct a monitoring

program for a privately-owned spring fed which discharges into

the Letort Spring Run. This monitoring location is 1.2 miles

away from our Authority Well One. Now, we would discuss this

matter, you know, for hours and hours, but I don't mean to do

that. But we have --- have --- excuse me, condensed 12 years

of several bullet points that will shed light on the SRBC

unwillingness to listen to our experienced geologist.

Along with our testimony we have included supporting

documents and logical information that shows this is a waste of

good ratepayers' money and should be eliminated immediately

from our SRBC docket, which is at Exhibit 1.

Our Authority continues to spend money for

engineering services to the tune of $10,000 a year and an

additional expense of roughly $20,000 a year for an employee

wages and travel to and from the site to ensure that data being

collected is not compromised due to debris affecting the

overflow measuring of the spring. Again, I apologize for my

adjusting my glasses.

The following are some of the most important points

that we --- that we need to make on how --- yeah, however they

may affect things.

Number one, pumping collection data. The Authority

had one of the most extensive monitoring programs ever seen by

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our hydrologists, which is Exhibit 2, and a total of 13

groundwater public wells were installed with data loggers for

spring water surface sites that included the U.S. Army

Barracks' water supply source and the Rousek Springs three ---

I can't get --- excuse me, prime sites along the stream bank of

the Letort Spring and the United States Geological Staff Gage

located at the discharge point for the Letort Spring into the

Conodoguinet Creek. And we realize that the Letort Spring is

considered a high-quality, cold water fishery, but to require

seven stream monitoring points is overkill.

The Rousek Spring is 1.2 miles from our Well One.

Our hydrologist indicated to us that it was improbable ---

again, I apologize --- that the well drawdown would impact the

spring flow due to the discharge and the geology of the area,

which is at Exhibit 3.

We should note that the spring is at a higher

elevation than the well --- than the well water level, which

makes it quite unlikely that --- that well impact could affect

the water recharge to the spring.

Specific costs. High costs were incurred in

rebuilding the Rousek Springs, which is privately owned. The

authority properly managed --- monitored this location. Over

$45,000 was spent on engineering services to acquire the

permits and the physically reconstruction of the dam. See

Exhibit 4. A new restored dam delighted --- delighted the

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owners, of course, but we are pretty sure that the ratepayer

will not be that thrilled.

I would also like to make note that the authority

had to pay two clean-up messes from the temporary testing site

which was abandoned by the United States Army Barracks after

they completed their golf course well drawdown test.

The SRBC involved our 72-hour drawdown test. Due to

the recharge of the discharged water, raising the level in the

Rousek Springs, our water was discharged over 4,000 feet form

the well --- from Well Site One to an open discharge located in

a farm field. The water then recharged the Rousek Spring

monitoring site, another 3,000 feet away. The U.S. Army

Barracks' public water supply, located another 800 feet

upstream from the Rousek Spring monitoring site, showed no

drawdown from our 72-hour pump test, nor did it show any

recharge from our discharge.

We would like to make note of an email sent to Steve

Read at ARM Group by Mr. Bob Pody, a staff member at the SRBC,

which is at Exhibit 5, dated May the 4th, 2004. Please note

that two, which refers to the new Carlisle Barracks golf course

well showed signs of impact on Rousek Spring when they

performed their pump test three years --- yeah, three years

prior. Excuse me. Could it not be assumed that the golf

course well drawdown monitor of the golf course well referred

to by Mr. Pody was also monitored by the Authority and no

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underground communications between the two water resources were

found?

It should be further noted that the Authority

monitoring showed slightly --- excuse me again, showed nightly

flow reductions in the Rousek Spring, which apparently

correlated with the golf course well. However, this does not

seem to concern SRBC.

Number five, we have great concern with the SRBC

using the expertise of an outside consultant, Mr. Jim

Richenderfer, a sitting member of the Letort Regional

Authority, the LRB, a local environmental group, whose mission

is to preserve and protect the Letort. Mr. Richenderfer

submitted comments on April 22nd, 2004, on behalf of the LRB

--- or LRA, which can be seen in Exhibit 6, and then was

employed by the SRBC to review our permit. This is clear

indication on a log sign --- indicated on a log sign-in sheet

dated 12/22/2009, Exhibit 7.

Well One is permitted contingently on SRBC's

approval pending Rousek Spring monitoring for 1.44 MGDs,

million gallons per day, and the Authority's daily water usage

for 2016 was 833,000 gallons per day or 58 percent of the

well's capacity. But as owners --- excuse me, as owners of a

water supply system, we need to ensure we have adequate

capability in the event of a catastrophic event, pipe failure,

major water break or other supplies from South Middleton

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Authority simply dries up. We feel that this well is an

insurance policy for our customers.

The final point I would like to make is that how

much money this has cost the ratepayers of Middlesex Township.

To date, including the cost of the reconstruction of the dam,

engineering costs to submit the monitoring report for Rousek

Springs, which again I'll specify is privately owned, the

Authority has spent $177,879.35. This does not include the

$20,000 per year in employee costs which added an additional

$120,000 from 2011 through 2016. Nearly $300,000 has been

spent by our ratepayers to satisfy this docket requirement.

In closing, we would ask this Committee to continue

to pursue this matter and get answers to why there is no

oversight and why our ratepayer customers have no say. Thank

you for your time, and I apologize for stumbling.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: No need to apologize, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Geistwhite and thank you, Mr. Morrison, for

joining us today also.

Representative Bloom, I believe represents the area

that you're from. Representative Bloom?

REPRESENTATIVE BLOOM: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And

thank you, Supervisor Geistwhite and Roy as well. $300,000 has

been spent so far by our Authority to deal with the SRBC's

requirements. What environmental benefit has come from that?

Has spending this $300,000 of taxpayer, ratepayer --- ratepayer

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funds helped in any tangible way to protect the environment or

preserve our water resources? Are we $300,000 better off?

MR. GEISTWHITE: Representative Bloom, I think I can

answer that with one answer. No. If Roy wants to elaborate,

he's the --- our overall manager, but ---.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Turn the microphone on and push

the green light there and pull the microphone up to you.

MR. GEISTWHITE: I think I can answer it in one ---

one word. No. If there's more to it, Mr. Morrison, our

Authority Manager, can answer that better, but I don't know of

any.

MR. MORRISON: The only benefit is, is that SRBC

gets data collection from Rousek Spring that was ---.

REPRESENTATIVE BLOOM: So they charge you $300,000

essentially to get some data on a privately-owned spring?

MR. MORRISON: Correct.

REPRESENTATIVE BLOOM: Thank you. Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, Representative Bloom.

Representative Tallman?

REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here. I just need a little clarification

of where we're at. So I've been to the Letort Springs once

with the South Central Conservation District and once on my

own. Very nice, big brown trout there. Are we talking the

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same --- that same Watercrest Farm?

MR. GEISTWHITE: No.

MR. MORRISON: No. The Watercrest Farm is further

to the south. That's --- that's actually at the feeder spring,

where actually the head starts at the quarry on ---.

MR. GEISTWHITE: That would be South Middleton.

MR. MORRISON: South Middleton.

MR. GEISTWHITE: South Middletown area.

REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: So when we were there, one

of the reasons why that's such a beautiful trout stream,

besides being a limestone springs, three of them there, is the

water flow is constant, constant volume, constant temperature.

And I'm assuming --- where's this spring that you mentioned?

Where is that located in relationship ---?

MR. GEISTWHITE: Rousek Spring is right off ---

because I know you understand the area very, very closely, it's

literally right at the border of Middlesex Township and North

Middleton, right off Claremont Road, right just east of the

boundary of the Carlisle Barracks. It's right in that area.

And we, the Township and, of course, the municipal

authority, we're very protective of the Letort Spring as well.

The thing that has had us puzzled with most of this is this

spring is privately owned. It's been there for, you know, who

knows. Why SRBC picked that as a monitoring situation is a

whole interesting thing. The amount of money we have had to

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pay to improve a private spring so that it meets these testing

requirements is just unreal to us. That's where so much of

this money has gone.

But at the same time, and I briefly mentioned it,

we've got the U.S. Army War College or the Carlisle Barracks

sitting right next door with a great golf course. But they've

not been included in a lot of these testings because it's U.S.

Government property. So there's all these issues that come

into this.

We do not mind following a lot of these rules and

regulations as long as they're realistic. We still don't have

an approval for this well. I mean, it's what 12 years later.

We're still playing around with --- with monitoring this. That

--- that spring has been sold. I mean, a new family has moved

in there. And nice couple. They've been very, very willing to

work us, have small children. They're floating stuff in the

spring periodically. We're constantly having to check to make

sure they haven't, you know, damaged the monitoring equipment.

And we just paid how much to fix it additionally?

MR. MORRISON: Another thousand.

MR. GEISTWHITE: Another thousand dollars or so

because they want to put fish in the spring. So we're required

to put a --- install a weir so that the fish don't get out. I

mean, it just goes on and on. And as a couple of you know me

well, being Chairman of the supervisors, the ratepayers aren't

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real thrilled about all these additional costs.

And I totally agree with the gentleman from

Shrewsbury, there just seems to be no oversight of SRBC. Who's

checking on them? They spent a lot of time checking on us.

REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN: Thank you.


Tallman.

Our final question from Representative DeLissio.


Mr. Geistwhite, can you talk a little bit about this $20,000

annually for wages for an employee to check the site? Is that

--- that seems like a lot of money. What's involved in that?

That that's the numbers on an annualized basis. How far is the

site from where the employee is going? How much time does it

take? Is this a daily event?

MR. GEISTWHITE: I'm going to defer to our Township

Manager.

MR. MORRISON: It's about eight miles from the

municipal building. And he checks it twice a day and takes

data log information from the data logger that's installed

there. It's a data logger that checks the weir flow into the

spring --- from the spring into the Letort.

So there's constantly debris, you know, leaves, all

kinds of junk getting in there. Sometimes kids throw their

toys in there and, you know, it basically stops the flow going

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through that system, so we have to constantly download that and

then take measurements. And we also have to take --- if

there's an event of a rain, we have to take --- we have a stage

gage there and we have to measure the rain. So it's a --- it's

a constant project. You know, he spends --- you know, from

travel back and forth, he's spending about two hours out of his

day doing that. And that's 365 days a year.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: And is that 120 --- I just

want to make sure that I understand the numbers accurately.

And your .7, is that 120 part of the 300 or in addition to the

300?

MR. MORRISON: No, that's --- that's in addition.

We spend about $20,000 per year for that. Excuse me. We pay

$20,000 a year for the employee and then $10,000. The $177,000

was all prior to. That was including the dam restoration and

all our engineering fees and so forth to do that part of it.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: So Mr. Morrison, I don't

mean to be dense, but that 120 is 120 plus 177, that equals the

300 or ---?

MR. MORRISON: That's correct.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: It is? So it is part of

that 300?

MR. MORRISON: Yes, it is all part of that.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: Got it. Thank you.


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DeLissio. Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony. We

appreciate it.

MR. GEISTWHITE: Thank you.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Our next testifier is Mr. Jim

Eshleman, Chairman Municipal Authority of East Hempfield

Township. I understand he is the constituent of Representative

Miller's I believe. Sir, you can begin when you're ready, sir.

MR. ESHLEMAN: I'm ready. Good morning. I hope you

have my handout. We have been embroiled in a seven-year

process. And to describe seven years in seven minutes is an

impossible task.

I'd like to direct you first --- well, first of all,

I'd like to say we're just as outraged over fees and costs as

everybody else, but this goes way beyond fees and costs.

Secondly, Mr. Ramsey said that there could be fear

of testifying. I should be one of those people because seven

years of work is now before the SRBC for a decision and yet I'm

here giving my testimony.

I'd like to direct you to the back of the third

page. There's an attachment. It looks like this chart. And I

think I can explain a lot of the text in this chart. The first

column is our nine sources of spring and nine wells, the date

they were established, the spring and the first four were pre-

SRBC regs. Well Number Five was the first docketed well. Well

Six and Seven are on the docket. Well Eight is on the docket

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and Well 11 is on the docket.

Our capacity when Well Number Five came up for

re-docketing was 6.06 million gallons per day. We went through

their process and let me just --- the result was --- if you

look at the results, the individual capacity on --- on Well

Five plus the other five sources, which they eliminated the

grandfathering on, when they were done with us the capacity was

2.2, reduced from 2.5 to 2.2 million gallons per day. But the

blue shading shows you that those three wells were grouped

together and there was an individual capacity for those of .67,

which equals Well Number Two. So essentially those --- Well

Number One and Well Number Two are almost meaningless because

we're only allowed to pump .67 out of the group.

They also took our entire system and put a limit of

1.937 on the entire system. So that took our capacity from

6.06 million gallons per day to 1.94 million gallons per day, a

68 percent reduction in capacity. That's what I mean where

this goes far beyond cost and fees.

I'm just going to --- I'd just like to paint a

little bit of picture of how a water system operates. You

know, we don't have a guy sitting behind a desk in front of a

wall full of meters, and when the meter on Well Number One hits

2.6 --- .268 an alarm goes off and tells him, hey, turn off

Well Number One and turn on Well Number Two. We don't ---

there's not a meter that says, okay, Well Numbers One, Two and

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Three have --- are now approaching .67. Time to --- an alarm

goes off, time to turn those off and go to the next well. And

we don't have a meter that aggravates all nine sources and

tells us when we approach 1.937.

Wells are connected to pump houses. You treat the

water in the pump house. You pump the water into a

distribution system. Your house and businesses are connected

to that distribution system and there's water tanks at the

highest points in the community. Our pumps --- when the level

in the water tanks drops, the pumps come on. When the --- when

the tanks are full again, the pumps turn off. We have no

control over the user. You know, if you look out your window

and your grass looks brown and you decide I'm going to set up

sprinklers and water my grass today, we have no control on the

user side of this how much get pumped. So it's essential for

us --- you know, it's a disconnect between theory and practice.

I mean, how does the operator live with these kind

of limits? The only way you can live is you need to have

excess capacity so you don't go over these limits. And you

know, we --- we report --- we have to submit a quarterly

report, how much we pump each day from every well, and if we go

over our limits the fine is a thousand gallons per day, I

think.

Last --- the second --- the last page, you know, I

just need to explain this because this is the science on which

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we were regulated. They --- basically my understanding of the

SRB science is we're --- you have a drainage basin, that if you

drew a circle around your well, the high points, everything

that falls inside that circle recharges into the ground. They

compare that to a bathtub. Turns out we have five or six wells

within one bathtub. So they look at that like there's six

straws sucking out of one bathtub. The only water that's going

into that bathtub is recharged from rainfall. And you know,

consequently, that's why they had to lump all these wells

together and regulate this. That does not match reality.

Our Well Number Eight, when we drilled that well ---

when we drilled the well, we got very little capacity. We

moved over ten feet, drilled. We hit an --- we hit an opening

and got a thousand gallons per minute.

Well Number 11, which was 1.6 --- 56 million gallons

per day, very close to Well Number Eight, completely different

geology. And that well was all fractured. When they drilled

the well, they almost lost the rig.

I owned a quarry about two or three miles from this

--- from our system. We quarried up until 1950 and hit a

spring and the quarry filled up with water. We bought the farm

across the street and mined for the next 30 years and pumped

almost no water. The bathtub theory is not the whole story.

It doesn't work.

Okay. I'm going to go back to the first page now.

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So point number, our docket expired on Well Number Five in

March of 2011. They said get your --- you get your application

in by September of 2010. The application fee was $17,600.

Seemed a little steep, but you know, you have to do what you

have to do.

The first thing they did was ask us for data on

these grand --- on these grandfathered wells. They made a

decision that we had pumped those more than we were allowed to,

which immediately took away all the grandfathering, brought

them into that docket application and the fee went up $32,740

to $50,340.

I can't --- I can't emphasize enough for you the

difference between permitting a new well out in the middle of

an open field and going through this process on existing wells,

which are all interconnected and on an operating system, and

you have to keep that system operating while you're going ---

doing pump testing and doing all these other things. And when

you're pump testing one well you're supposed to take other

wells off line so --- so you can look at the effects and so

forth. How are you supposed to operate your system?

So that --- so --- okay, so the SRBC wanted pump

testing. And point number five is a description of what our

engineer told us would be involved in the pump testing. I'm

not going to go through it because I don't have time. The

bottom line, it was like $70,000 to pump test one well.

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We decided pump testing wasn't practical. We asked

to submit historical data. Of course, you know, another point

I want to make. When we were going through this process I

thought we were just re-permitting, we were getting a new

permit. I didn't realize that there was a game in here. The

game was to take capacity away. I thought we were just

re-permitting. So we submitted the historical data. But if

historically you didn't pump as much as you were approved for,

they're going to take away the difference.

So after much --- point number eight, after much

back-and-forth, we finally agreed on those limits and the

reduction on those five wells from 2.56 down to 2.22. That was

going to be presented to the September 20 River Basin

Commission meeting.

A notice came out that there was going to be a

prehearing 30 days in advance. We contacted the people and

said, are you going to recommend what we agreed to in May?

Kind of got a wishy-washy answer, but saw no reason to go to

the prehearing.

They called us up and said we would like to meet

with you on August 30th. We go up there and that's when they

dropped the bombshell on us that they're putting this 1.94 cap

on our entire system, taking away 68 percent of our capacity.

1.94 was how much we pumped in 2006. Now, if we pumped 1.94 in

2006, how could we approve any more requests for water, any

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more capacity? They took away all of our capacity.

I immediately worked through Labor Day weekend,

going over all their data, writing letters. You know, we did

everything we could do before the September 20th meeting, but

to no avail.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, sir. We're about ten

minutes into your testimony. We have a few minutes left for Q

and A. Could you give us a closing thought there to kind of

wrap it up before we go to questions? I understand you have a

lot of passion and you've been put through the wringer it

seems. And didn't mean to cut you off there but you have a

good bit of information.

MR. ESHLEMAN: Yeah. I would just like a minute to

talk about 14. So they rendered this decision at the

Commission. We appealed the decision and we went to the next

Commission meeting in December. And this gets to due process,

you know, points A, B, C and D.

The Chairman of the Commission called their attorney

and said present the information regarding this appeal. Then

the Chairman calls up our attorney and he --- and he cautioned

him that the Commissioners were already fully briefed on this

matter and to be as brief as possible in presenting our case.

At the conclusion of his presentation, somebody read

a prepared statement and made a recommendation to deny the

appeal. In our attorney's words, based on comments by the

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Chairman to the SRBC's attorney, the reasoning of the

Commission was that, although they follow to fail (sic) their

own regulations --- you can read it --- such errors were

harmless because the Authority now has the opportunity to

perform testing that will enable the Commission to develop a

reasoned result.

We've been working for four-and-a-half years, done

operational testing. We spent $423,000 through the end of

April on third-party fees. That doesn't include any of our

internal costs or time. $423,000, and we have a submission in

front of them to find out if they're going to give us any of

that capacity back.

You can read my conclusions, my concluding points

for yourself.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, sir. Representative

Ryan?

REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: When you only have one mic for

five Representatives, that's cruel and unusual punishment.

Mr. Eshleman, thank you. I used to live in East

Hempfield Township, so thank you very much.

Let me put a personal perspective on this. While

he's going through this, people own building lots in the area

were sometimes restricted from there to Manheim Township about

what you could build and couldn't build because of regulations

that no one can second guess in the process. So here's my

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question. Is it --- is it reasonable, based upon my

understanding of your testimony, that the above-ground contour

map that you might look at in some of the documents we've seen

is not indicative of the geology of the ground underneath and

that any attempt by just assuming basin rainwater runoff or

something like that, that the SRBC is using as an indicator of

what you can pump and not pump could actually lead to bad

science, not good science, and then you're left with trying to

clean up their mess?

MR. ESHLEMAN: To me --- I'm not a geologist. I'm a

civil engineer. But to me, topography would define what the

bath --- the size of the bathtub, you know, where water falls,

which way it runs.

But obviously there's more water in our bathtub than

the rainfall recharge. You know, I mean, what they do is they

take the average rainfall, they multiply that by .6 and call

that the one in ten-year drought rainfall. And you can't ---

you can't have more than that. That's the limit.

You know, there are underground aquifers coming into

that area. There is so much water there. You know, we've

proven after the pump testing --- I don't know what --- I don't

know what conclusion they're going to reach, but our geologist

says it's a no-brainer. That six million gallons was there.

REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Yeah. In my practice, I

specialize in keeping companies out of bankruptcy, and in a lot

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of cases we've had to do environmental cleanup. And the

geology of this particular area, it's a real mistake to presume

that the topography where we live is indicative of what the

underground is and I reinforce your point. You're absolutely

correct.

MR. ESHLEMAN: But there's even a bigger hammer

here. If you prove there's more water in that bathtub than

they say, well, then what they say is, oh, well, then the

bathtub must be bigger. So they change the boundaries of the

bathtub and your next source has to be outside the bathtub. So

you know, if we prove that the water is there that we said was

there, they're going to move out the boundary, and that means

we might have to go miles away to drill the next --- even

outside of our system to find our next source, you know.

And another thing I didn't say here was, in the

course of this we added up all the development demands in our

area and said there was six million gallons of demand. So what

they did was they rendered their decision. They took away four

million gallons and then they said, oh, and by the way, a

special condition in the docket is provide us a plan of how

you're going to provide that six million gallons.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, sir.

REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Thank you very much. Mr.

Chairman, thanks.


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That's all the time we have for this testifier. Thank you,

sir, for your testimony today. We appreciate it.

Our next and last testifier is Mr. Matt Battersby,

Esquire, the Solicitor of East Berlin Area Joint Authority.

Thank you for joining us, sir. You can begin when

you're ready, sir.

ATTORNEY BATTERSBY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I

hope I have this on. Yes, I do. Ready?

I am going to read my testimony. I'm used to

reading things into records in my profession. My name is

Matthew Battersby. I'm here on behalf of the East Berlin Area

Joint Authority.

The small town of East Berlin is located along the

Conewago Creek in eastern Adams County, Pennsylvania. As a

result of this geographical location, it falls within the area

of jurisdiction of the Susquehanna River Basin Commission.

From approximately the 1890s and going forward the

Town of East Berlin has supplied water to its residents. Some

of the town's wells goes all the way back to the 19th Century.

Just a couple years ago a developer who had planned

to hook into the town's sewer and water system went bankrupt.

As a result thereof, East Berlin acquired a water well site and

the developer intended to dedicate the town's water system.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Excuse me, sir.

ATTORNEY BATTERSBY: Yes.

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CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Excuse me. If the audience

would please suspend any conversations. If you have a

conversation, please take it outside and allow our testifier to

testify conversation free.

Sorry for the interruption, sir.

ATTORNEY BATTERSBY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As I said, East Berlin's Municipal Authority decided

to add this one additional well to supply its water. As a

result, the Authority's municipal engineers, Buchart-Horn,

applied for all necessary permits from the Pennsylvania

Department of Environmental Protection and proceeded to do all

the pumping tests required by DEP for a full licensed municipal

owned water well. DEP reviewed all test data, engineering

reports submitted on behalf of East Berlin and granted the

necessary permits.

What happened next is why I'm here today. SRBC

contacted the municipal authority and demanded we do an

additional aquifer testing via video step test --- test plan

pumping test and address comments submitted by SRBC, amend the

data and submission given to SRBC three times. The total

additional engineering costs over and above what East Berlin

spent pumping and test results given to DEP was $155,050. A

copy of that bill is attached.

Not only did East Berlin incur additional

engineering costs to satisfy the additional redundant tests

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demanded by SRBC, they also paid SRBC $12,960 just to have SRBC

read the aquifer teste results and plans submitted to them.

Copies of the checks are attached to my testimony.

Finally, in addition to what was required to SRBC's

approval to use the water well, East Berlin was billed an

annual compliance fee of $1,100 which East Berlin paid to SRBC

under protest. The annual fee is nothing more than a

consumption tax which is derived by the number of gallons of

water being withdrawn from the new well. This is no different

than the tax paid by someone at a gas pump when filling up the

car. This annual fee is a mandatory fee based upon the gallons

consumed.

I wish to note that SRBC could have obtained most of

the information they requested from DEP, but instead to demand

additional testing, et cetera, from East Berlin, driving up the

costs of permitting the well by an additional $155,000 plus

their fees of nearly $13,000. This is clearly a duplication of

government mandated requirements.

East Berlin's municipal authority supplies water to

just over 700 customers. The costs stated may seem small to a

large public utility company, but to a small municipal

authority the costs are not small.

East Berlin and other small towns throughout the

SRBC area of operation are caught up in the system of

never-ending tests, reviews, planning reports and attendant

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fees. East Berlin was forced to borrow money from Pennvest in

part to pay for the additional costs and fees generated by

SRBC. This is, quite simply, an extra bureaucratic expense and

burden upon the citizens of Pennsylvania who are unfortunate

enough to live within the SRBC jurisdiction. Nothing that SRBC

demanded from East Berlin filled one extra glass of water.

It is interesting to note that pursuant to federal

law, 43 United States Code, Section 19621-6, river basin

commissions such as SRBC are supposed to be funded by the

federal government with the remainder of their annual budget

funded via state appropriations. To date, it appears that the

federal government has chosen not to fund SRBC with annual

contributions.

So what has SRBC done to make up the financial

shortfall? They have created and written their own fee

schedules and have extracted money in the form of annual

compliance fees, wellhead extraction consumption taxes and

fines and penalties.

Since the overwhelming majority of the Susquehanna

River and the SRBC jurisdiction falls within the borders of

Pennsylvania, the majority of the penalties, fines, fees are

paid by Pennsylvania citizens. SRBC claims to be a federal

agency or quasi-federal agency. Yet who has oversight or

control over what SRBC charges in the way of taxes and fees?

They seem to be a power unto themselves. The only legal

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recourse or challenge to anything SRBC does is to appeal to

SRBC itself. You've heard various people testify to that

already this morning. And then if you don't like the answer,

go to Federal District Court, which by the way, gives great

weight and deference to the decisions and findings of an

administrative agency, in other words, SRBC itself. There

seems to be no Pennsylvania legislative power or oversight, and

small town Pennsylvania needs somewhere to go and someone to

rein in and oversee what SRBC is doing.

Surely, duplicating tests, licensing of water well

projects approved by DEP would be an area to explore.

Only the legislature has the power to tax, and only

the legislature can delegate or transfer that power. I believe

this area of concern should also be explored by the

legislature.

Pennsylvania water law has traditionally, and to

this day, followed the common law of riparian rights. Most

cases establishing riparian rights in Pennsylvania hold that

the water percolates through the earth, but does not follow a

well-defined channel, belongs absolutely to the owner of the

land over which it passes. But where water follows a

well-defined channel either above or below the surface, the

owner of the land it passes has only a qualified right to use

it.

Pursuant to the Fifth Amendment of the United States

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Constitution, the government, be it local, state or national,

cannot take private property without rendering what's called

just compensation to the owner of that property. When a

government agency passes regulations that essentially take

property rights away, it's called inverse condemnation. If

groundwater is a property right owned by the landowner, then

how can SRBC simply charge annual consumption tax and fees or,

in the extreme, deny or limit a person the right to extract

water from their own ground water resources without just

compensation?

Governments can tax private property and they can

tax mineral extraction if they wish, but the power to tax

resides solely with the Pennsylvania legislature or the United

States Congress. Only those bodies have been given the power

by the people.

Finally, Section Two, Article Eight, Pennsylvania

Constitution, states, and I'll quote it, it's short, all taxes

shall be uniform upon the same class of subjects within the

territory limits of the authority levying the tax and shall be

levied and collected under general laws.

SRBC levied fees and taxes on public water wells

that yield over 100,000 gallons and upon PUC water companies.

SRBC does not tax, charge --- tax or charge individual

homeowner's wells, farms, et cetera. Where is the uniformity

and fairness in that? Only the residents who are supplied

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water via a Public Utility Company or Municipal Water Authority

are forced to bear the tax burdens placed upon them by the

SRBC.

I'm now available to take any questions.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, sir. I appreciate

your sitting through all the other testimony before you finally

gave yours as the last testifier. Thank you for being here

today.

I understand you're representing East Berlin, who is

from Representative Tallman's --- Representative Miller's

district, I believe. Representative Tallman? Representative

Tallman's, do you have any questions for Mr. Battersby?

REPRESENTATIVE TALLMAN:

Matt and I have had many conversations in 12 years.

East Berlin is actually Dan Moul's hometown, but I just thank

you for being here to understand --- and if you've ever read

the testimony when they debated in 1968 in the Pennsylvania

House the joining in the Susquehanna River Basion Commission,

it wasn't called states' rights back then, but many members of

the House said we were giving up our state's sovereignty.

Thank you.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Representative Dush?

REPRESENTATIVE DUSH: No, nothing.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Representative Miller?

REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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Thank you for your testimony. Earlier Mr. Dehoff testified

that there's no duplication of testing and requirements and

such, but you said that that is the opposite. Can you --- can

you further expound upon that, please?

ATTORNEY BATTERSBY: Sure. Attached to my testimony

is a bill we got from the municipal engineering firm,

Buchart-Horn, and they had to do extra pump --- we test pumps.

And as the previous testifiers explained to you, you have to

get so many gallons per minute to have a 100,000-gallon well.

SRBC didn't like the data. They could have gotten

that exact same data from DEP but chose instead to request

independent data submitted to them. So that extra pumping of

the well and proof submitted to SRBC is --- it's our belief

that was available through DEP and they could have simply gone

even under a Right to Know request, which we discussed this

morning, they could have gotten it. But I'm sure DEP would

have professionally given them a courtesy copy.

So that aquifer testing and all those things that

were done to bring this well in line, we had to do it over for

SRBC. So that's duplicative.


Miller. Representative DeLissio?


Are you --- I just want to be clear. Are you saying that the

dollars charged by the SRBC to local municipalities are a de

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facto tax and, therefore, only the legislature reserves that

right to tax or is that word used or --- I just want to be

clear because towards the end of your testimony you talked a

lot about taxing authority.

ATTORNEY BATTERSBY: Right. This was actually ---

and Representative Tallman brought that up. If you look at the

legislative data, the journals from both the Senate and the

House in 1968, 1969, they were essentially questioning the fact

of giving up their sovereignty and their power to raise money

to tax the citizens to a river basin commission.

When you --- certainly when you go to the gas pump

and you pump a gallon of gas in your car you pay something

called a liquid gas tax, which then is distributed to the

municipalities. Many municipalities that testified here this

morning are being taxed on a consumption basis, a fee to SRBC.

I don't care if you call it a fee, a toll, a charge. If a

government charges me money and then if I don't pay it, I'm

subject to a penalty, subject to interest and subject to fines,

that's what's called a tax. So it's the same thing as I pay a

local school tax on my real estate. I pay, you know ---.

Now, if it's a fee and it's truly a fee, like

getting on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I can choose not to go to

the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I can try Route 30 all the way

across the state, God help me, and I'll get there a lot faster

and I'll pay the fee. But a tax is something that's levied

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against the citizens in order to support a government entity.

And that's what this is.

And my testimony here this morning is that this is,

in fact, a tax and I think the legislature couldn't have given

that power away. It's clearly in the Constitution that only

the legislature can raise taxes inside the Commonwealth and

they do not have the power to delegate it or give it away to

some other body.

REPRESENTATIVE DELISSIO: Thank you. And by the

way, Route 30 is the prettier ride particularly through Adams

County.


DeLissio. Representative Moul?


Thank you, Matt, for being here today. You touched on

something in here that I just recently read in a court case

from --- actually held up by the Supreme Court in 1889 that

basically says water under your land is absolutely your water,

and you have the right to do with it as you please.

ATTORNEY BATTERSBY: That's been historic common law

of Pennsylvania, yes.

REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Correct. So in your legal

profession, if somebody charges you to use something that you

own, coming out of your land, do they have the right to

actually do that, even though they're going under the guise of

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a compact that's just that? In your legal opinion, does a

federal, slash, state compact supersede a Supreme Court

decision?

ATTORNEY BATTERSBY: Not when it comes to

groundwater. I think that's where I'm focusing is the

criticism here is that they are, in fact, charging people to

take the groundwater. And you'll note that SRBC only goes

after the low-hanging fruit, namely the municipal wells that

are licensed through DEP. They --- I don't know, you might

have a minor revolution out there if you went through the

entire Susquehanna River Basin and went to every individual

landowner and farmer and said we're now going to charge you to

take the water out of your land. I think --- I think you might

--- you might --- you might get quite a bit of pushback on that

one.

REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: In a sense, those municipal

wells are those landowners just like the municipal wells that

belong here in Shrewsbury, every single resident of this town

owns that well. That's my point.

ATTORNEY BATTERSBY: And not only that, and the town

that paid --- bought those wells back in the 1890s in East

Berlin, they purchased them from a private owner.

REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Thank you. Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

CHAIRMAN METCALFE: Thank you, Representative Moul.

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Any other members? Representative Dush?

REPRESENTATIVE DUSH: Thanks, Matt. Thanks,

Chairman. In your testimony it was brought up that pursuant to

the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution the government, be

it local, state or national, cannot take private property

without rendering just compensation to the owner of that

property.

Do you feel that the SRBC, if they're taking that

property --- that property away from you, maybe ought to be ---

the roles ought to be reversed that they would be compensating

the owners rather than ---?

ATTORNEY BATTERSBY: Yes, I do. And that's what

inverse condemnation means. If you pass a government

regulation that takes my property rights away, I --- suppose I

own a farm. Well, I do own a farm. But let's say you pass a

zoning ordinance that says you can no longer farm that farm.

Well, then you've taken away my property right. If I'm a

farmer, I can no longer farm. And that's --- and that's ---

and I title that just compensation.

Similarly, SRBC passes all sorts of regulations and

they're taking --- if water is a property right, and I contend

that it is, then they maybe should be paying the property

owners for that, not the other way around.

REPRESENTATIVE DUSH: Thank you. I agree. Thank

you, Chairman.

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Thank you, sir, for your testimony. And thank you

to the members for your time.

This is the second hearing we've had in this issue.

I'm planning an informational meeting with the members of the

State Government Committee probably not this week but probably

sometime during the next several weeks, depending on schedules

and budget schedule. But I'd like to get the members of the

Committee together and certainly would invite members back to

be at that informational meeting, they have an interest in the

issue that have made time to come out to hearings. But we'll

look forward to talking and hearing everyone's thoughts after

receiving all of this testimony.

We still have additional questions that have been

raised through some of the testimony, I'm sure. I know I have

some and just from talking to members, members have further

questions. So we'll look forward to talking and discussing the

testimony and talking about how we can change this atmosphere

in Pennsylvania related to the Commission. Thank you, members,

for your time.

Motion by Representative Ryan to adjourn. Seconded

by Representative Dush. This meeting is adjourned. Everyone

have a great day.

* * * * * * *

MEETING CONCLUDED AT 11:11 A.M.

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CERTIFICATE

I hereby certify, as the stenographic reporter,

that the foregoing proceedings were taken stenographically

by me, and thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under

my direction; and that this transcript is a true and

accurate record to the best of my ability.

Documents

1 COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF … · PRESENTATION By Mr. Andrew Dehoff 10 - 14 QUESTIONS 14 - 22 PRESENTATION By Mr. Thomas J. Shepstone 22 - 25 QUESTIONS 26 - 35 PRESENTATION