The CEO of a Canonsburg-based gas company recently told a group of state advisors that the company’s fracking operations pose “no material impact” to air and water quality.
The comment from CNX CEO Nick Deiuliis to Pennsylvania’s Citizens Advisory Council came about 18 months into the gas giant’s Radical Transparency program, rolled out in late 2023 with support from Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Radical Transparency bridges CNX with the state Department of Environmental Protection and Shapiro administration, offering the DEP “unprecedented” access to wells for independent study in addition to public emissions disclosures from CNX. The program is CNX’s effort to increase operational visibility and show that unconventional gas development, or fracking, can be done safely.
According to the mutual agreement, the partnership aims to:
- Provide information on the environmental and health-related impacts of fracking
- Improve the disclosure of fracking chemicals
- Voluntarily increase setback distances between new fracking infrastructure and homes, schools and hospitals.
The program publishes real-time air monitoring data from well pads and compressor stations from 13 active facilities on their website and five “archived,” or inactive, sites. Clean Air Engineering, a private environmental engineering firm, collects air data at five-minute intervals and sends it to both CNX and the DEP “right away,” according to Volker Schmid, vice president of applied technologies at Clean Air Engineering.
David Hess, a former DEP secretary and current blogger on the environment, is critical of Radical Transparency, which he says amounts to little more than making public the same data the company is obliged to disclose to the DEP.
“It’s radical in name only,” said Hess. “They put up a nice looking web page with some information on air quality monitoring of things that may or may not be emitted at their sites, but it’s only for a limited amount of time.”
In addition to air monitoring, CNX also conducts pre- and post-drilling quarterly water testing around its operations.
CNX has expressed desire for other companies to join the initiative, though as of May 2025, Chemstream Inc., a chemical manufacturing company, is the only other group to join the program. “We’ve had a lot of good discussions with companies, but we haven’t actually had any pull the trigger,” said Hayley Scott, CNX vice president of reporting and compliance.
Spurred by health study
Radical Transparency came two months on the heels of DEP-contracted studies that found correlation — but not causation — between living near fracking and negative health outcomes such as increased cancer rates, lower birth rates and increased asthmatic episodes. The Environmental Health Project, the Environmental Integrity Project, Physicians for Social Responsibility-PA, and other groups point to peer-reviewed studies that associate increased negative health outcomes for those living near fracking infrastructure.
On May 1, Secretary of Health Debra Bogen said in an email to PublicSource: “The Shapiro administration is committed to protecting Pennsylvanians’ health and safety, and we are already working to develop concrete plans to address the potential health risks identified in these studies and ensure every concern is heard.”
CNX has described the studies as “flawed” and “inflammatory,” and the company seeks to add its voice to the fracking debate with the data collected under Radical Transparency.
According to CNX, there’s no way to prove that compounds with health effects came off of their sites. Chuck Hardoby, CNX’s regulatory reporting vice president, acknowledged the legitimacy of the Pitt study, but said there’s a gap in the data and an overemphasis placed on risk factors.
“Instead, you want to see if the health-causing concerns are actually coming off the site,” he said. “Because those studies weren’t proving causation. But we want to try to fill that gap and say, is it possible that our sites are causing this? We want more people to try to understand what we’re trying to do.”
CNX has acknowledged past violations, including a 2022 spill in Greene County and emissions reporting characterized by Shapiro as fraudulent at the Oak Springs pigging facility in Washington County. Company officials said they’re pushing for greater transparency and trust-building within the communities in which they operate.
“People have said, ‘What do we do when we find something?’ We’ll fix it. That’s what we’re doing this for,” said Director of Air Quality Jim Locke.
“We don’t have anything to hide,” Locke added. “We all live here, it means something to us.”
Cherry-picking or scheduled monitoring?
Critics of Radical Transparency claim the CNX monitoring data used in the company’s initial report on the program is insufficient and “cherry-picked.” Environmental advocates repeat this claim for the current program.
“Monitoring sites for six or nine months really isn’t going to give you any sort of meaningful data,” said Hess.
Though the company acknowledges equipment constraints, it denies claims that the data is selected to produce favorable results. Instead, CNX maintains that the program is built neutrally around site development schedules. Once pads are no longer producing much gas, monitors are rotated to new sites.
At a producing well pad in Washington County, two air monitors were situated down and upwind from the main pad. One was measuring PM2.5 — small particulate matter known to harm respiratory health — and the other for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene, collectively referred to as BTEX compounds.
Some experts say monitoring for these is not enough, pointing to peer-reviewed studies that suggest dozens of chemicals and compounds released from the fracking process may be carcinogenic.
In February, FracTracker Alliance, a nonprofit focused on fracking, environment and public policy, issued a statement accusing CNX of “attempting to use its own selectively-reported data to shape public policy while dismissing decades of peer-reviewed research that demonstrates the public health risks of fracking.”
Environmental advocates also consider long-term research the “gold standard” for evaluating health outcomes, and CNX’s monitoring time of six months falsely equates data in an “apples to oranges” comparison, said Alison Steele, executive director of the Environmental Health Project.
Thirst for water monitoring data
The mutual agreement included water monitoring in addition to air monitoring. Of the 18 total Radical Transparency sites, only one has water monitoring data, but it is only pre-drilling measurements.
According to Carrie Crumpton, the company’s vice president for environmental strategy, and Scott, quarterly monitoring of water around sites is conducted before and after drilling operations begin. However, Crumpton and Scott said that property owners must consent to publish post-drilling data, and many have not.
John Stolz, interim environmental and energy engineering chair at Duquesne University, said the 38 million gallons of sand, or proppant, used to drill at a Radical Transparency well pad in Westmoreland County would likely cause swelling that pushes fluids and gas out, creating “fugitive” leaks into soil and underground water sources.
“The fact of the matter is this stuff has to go somewhere,” he said. “It’s not going into a void.”
Trade secrets revealed
As part of the agreement, CNX is disclosing chemicals used in fracking that were previously deemed “trade secrets.” The company likens these chemicals to household cleaning agents and food preservatives.
Stolz calls these metaphors disingenuous. He identified several toxins and health impactors used in CNX’s disclosed fracking and drilling fluids, including acrylamide, glutaraldehyde and methanol.
According to Stolz, fugitive gas and brine migrations are common side effects of the fracking industry. He maintains that Radical Transparency does not demonstrate that CNX, or the industry at-large, can operate without environmental harms. “I know very well that the industry likes to create scenarios — and then prove that those scenarios say that everything’s okay.”
Setbacks and science
In its agreement with the state, CNX committed not to drill new developments within 600 feet of any existing buildings, 100 feet farther than the current setback limits under state law.
CNX representatives say the program was founded on the belief that fracking can be done safely, and they believe the data they’re collecting will support that. “We want to remove the speculation,” said Brian Aiello, external relations vice president. “How do we arrive at certain distances for setbacks? That should be a scientific decision, not a political decision. We want public policy in this state to be based on the data.”
Hess said the current legal limit of 500 feet has never been declared “safe” by the DEP. Rather, it’s the negotiated product of a standoff between industry and science — “one side starts at zero and the other side may start at 5,000 feet and you meet somewhere where both sides can agree,” said Hess.
There was no rigorous scientific study related to the 500 foot distance, he added. Recently, environmentalists submitted a petition to the state Environmental Quality Board to increase setback distances to 3,281 feet, based on peer-reviewed studies.
Shapiro gone soft?
Critics say the aims of Radical Transparency are at odds with peer-reviewed studies and the findings of a 2022 statewide Grand Jury investigation that found the state “failed to protect citizens during the fracking boom.”
As attorney general at the time that office led the grand jury process, Shapiro took an active role in prosecuting fracking companies, saying, “We can’t rely on big corporations to police themselves. … It’s the government’s job to set and enforce the ground rules that protect the public interest.”
Now that he’s in the governor’s mansion, some supporters feel Shapiro has let down Pennsylvanians by deviating from his aggressive stance.
Hess said Shapiro’s change in office comes with the responsibility of safeguarding the environmental and economic health of the commonwealth; as the nation’s second largest natural gas producer, a lot rides on the fracking industry.
The Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry trade group, said Radical Transparency reflects the importance of natural gas.
“Natural gas is absolutely critical for Pennsylvania’s future, and policies must be informed by actual site-level monitoring, first-hand sector expertise, and data-driven science,” said coalition spokesman Patrick Henderson. “Through widespread deployment of continuous air and water monitoring equipment throughout the basin, the actual data collected continues to show natural gas is developed both safely and responsibly, as CNX’s own initiative demonstrates.”
On May 1, Governor Shapiro announced that DEP would have unlimited access to a CNX well pad in Washington County, making good on a pledge from the 2023 Radical Transparency announcement.
“As attorney general and now as governor, I have listened to Pennsylvanians concerned about their health and safety — and I am delivering on the promise I made to them to conduct the most robust air monitoring,” Shapiro said.
Hess is unconvinced.
“I think [the program] was really in danger of being overblown from the beginning,” he said.
While the governor and CNX claimed that Radical Transparency was different from past practices, it “was left up to nonprofit groups and others to point out some of the deficiencies.”
Jake Vasilias is a freelance journalist and can be reached at jakevasilias@yahoo.com.
This story was fact-checked by Ladimir Garcia.
MOST READ STORIES
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
