By: Vanessa Lynch, Pennsylvania Campaign Coordinator
Date: August 6, 2026
About: OOOOc Methane Regulation State Plan Revision
To: Pennsylvania Air Quality Technical Advisory Committee
My name is Vanessa Lynch, and I am the Pennsylvania Campaign Coordinator for Moms Clean Air Force, representing more than 109,000 members across the commonwealth. But more importantly, I am a mother living in Allegheny County, raising my two children in a community directly impacted by oil and gas development.
In my township, a well pad has been fracked in a medium-density residential area—near homes, a park where families gather, a daycare center, and an assisted living facility. This isn’t abstract policy for us. It’s where we live. It’s the air my children breathe.
When methane leaks, health-harming volatile organic compounds are also released. Research links this pollution to asthma attacks, respiratory illness, adverse birth outcomes, reproductive harm, and increased cancer risk. For my family—and for the more than 100,000 Pennsylvania children living near fracking—oil and gas air pollution isn’t a theoretical threat. It is a daily reality of our lives.
I support the adoption of strong and durable methane safeguards enacted in an efficient way. Methane protections are an opportunity to correct past failures, including those outlined in then–Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s 43rd Grand Jury report, and to prevent future harm, especially as southwest Pennsylvania faces a potential surge in methane pollution from data centers powered by fracked gas.
Pennsylvania does not need to start from scratch. The federal OOOOc standards provide a strong, science-based foundation that has already been rigorously evaluated and deemed economically reasonable. The Department of Environmental Protection should treat these protections as the floor for this new consideration and focus on strengthening them where Pennsylvania needs it most.
One of those areas is low-producing wells. Despite their name, these wells are not low impact. They account for about half of methane emissions while producing only around 1% of the state’s oil and gas. And in 2024, just over 100 oil and gas corporations owned nearly 90% of all low-producing well sites with portfolios of 100 low-producing well sites or more. Strong, commonsense safeguards can and should apply to all wells, while still allowing flexibility for truly small operators.
The scale of the problem is staggering. Emissions from Pennsylvania’s more than 71,000 low-producing wells have the same annual climate impact as 23 coal-fired power plants. The cumulative effects on our health, our communities, and our climate are too significant to ignore.
I appreciate that Governor Shapiro has identified methane safeguards as a priority. As a leader who intimately knows the difficulties families on the frontline of the oil and gas industry face and who is championing bring your own generation data centers, Governor Shapiro must embrace ambitious action on methane safeguards. We must ensure these protections are strong and meaningful. Families like mine are depending on it.