The latest news from the National Park Service is that they are working to revise 30-year-old regulations that manage oil and gas exploration within the parks. With these revisions, the NPS will be able to more thoroughly protect and conserve the National Parks.
Currently, the regulations in place have a lot of gaps that oil and gas operators have exploited to further their development. One such example of this is “directional drilling,” the practice of placing equipment just outside the park’s borders and then drilling into the ground at a diagonal into reserves directly under the park.
In addition, the Park Service is hoping to add provisions which allow them to issue fines (or other forms of sanction) for small infractions, such as debris pileup, slow response to contain spills, and lack of maintenance.
The National Park Service is leaving this issue open to public comment until January 25th, 2010. You can read the notice here and place your comment here.
-via National Parks Traveler.
