I read with interest the Butler Eagle article “County farmers talk shop with legislators at tour” (Aug. 17), particularly regarding the proposed Senate Bill 349 that would require large scale solar developers to put up bonds for the decommissioning costs involved when the system is no longer used.

I totally agree; otherwise, any corporation that makes huge profits for many years could declare bankruptcy at the end of the system’s service life, leaving the decommissioning costs up to us taxpayers.

For this reason, I urge the Butler County commissioners and our legislators to support this bill, but with one addendum: to also require more reasonable decommissioning bonding requirements for oil and gas well drillers.

There are estimated to be over 300,000 abandoned shallow wells in Pennsylvania, and over 14,000 “unconventional” (fracking) wells in place today.

Current bonding requirements are $2,500 for shallow wells and $4,000 for fracking wells, while the Department of Environmental Protection and industry estimates show the true cost of plugging shallow wells can range from $10,000 to $100,000, and from $110,000 to over $400,000 to plug fracking wells.

One report indicates the total cost of plugging all these wells is over $20 billion, while funds set aside by drillers is only 0.2% of that total — leaving a huge funding gap that our children will have to pay for!

It’s time our legislators serve taxpayers, not the fossil fuel industry that makes huge profits but is not held accountable to clean up their messes.

Paul Scanlon, West Sunbury