Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission

From Wikimarcellus

Here is where some info about Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission
should go. This article is still a stub and needs your attention. It does
not have a template and contains minimal information. Please dive
in and help it grow!

The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission beginning in December, 2009 planned to conduct field inspections on some of the Marcellus shale drilling sites in Pennsylvania. The purpose of these inspections was to monitor safety conditions on well sites and access roads, as well as water quality from nearby streams and rivers. The Commission intended to take a more proactive role in monitoring potential problems before they escalated into serious water quality issues. Previously, the agency had primarily acted merely in a reactive mode--taking action once pollutants had already entered a waterway, but never anticipating potential water quality issues before they came to light.

According to an April, 2010 news article, the Fish and Boat Commission has instigated a program of trout management that involves having anglers help in finding and surveying the 45,513 streams in Pennsylvania for native trout. When a stream with a significant wild population is found (aka Class A trout stream), PDEP regulations are in place to restrict Marcellus shale development activities and ban the release of drilling waste water into the stream or its upstream tributaries. PDEP gives all Class A streams a High-Quality Protection designation meaning that these streams are subject to restrictions on degrading the fish habitat, adding siltation or impacting the normally cold water necessary for trout reproduction. The Commission publishes a list of Class A streams

• John Arway is Executive Director of the Commission.
• Dave Miko is the Chief of Fisheries Management.