"We want to make sure we have the science before the policy," he said.
These are dueling viewpoints for an epic decision - setting the conditions to allow natural gas drilling in the Delaware River basin, with its potentially rich deposits.
As the high-stakes gold rush has spread across Pennsylvania - nearly 3,000 natural gas wells drilled since 2005 and tens of thousands more to come - an area of roughly five counties in northeastern Pennsylvania has remained off limits.
And that has kept the Philadelphia region largely untouched by the boom and the environmental havoc that opponents say it can cause.
Now, against a backdrop of mounting accidents, debate over a severance tax, and last week's disclosure that the state Department of Environmental Protection's acting secretary, Michael Krancer, must approve all enforcement actions, the Delaware River Basin is seen as the next great frontier for fracking.
The group calling the shots is the Delaware River Basin Commission, a little-known interstate agency that oversees withdrawals and water quality in the vast watershed drained by the 330-mile-long Delaware River.
In December, the commission proposed 83 pages of regulations that would open wide-scale drilling for the first time but with rules that would be, in general, stricter than in the rest of Pennsylvania. A public comment period continues until April 15. Final rules could be adopted in September.
Before the commission acted, thousands of acres had been leased and seven wells drilled in northeastern Pennsylvania. But none were fracked - a process of injecting millions of gallons of water treated with chemicals, some toxic, into the ground to free the gas.
