Can Public Leak Patrols Stem Gas Emissions at a Profit? This is the second of a pair of "Your Dot" reactions to my post on citizens' efforts to build mapped data bases as a tool for tracking the gas drilling surge in the United States. The first, by environmental watchdog Walter Hang, described potential pitfalls in such "do it yourself" efforts. Today's post is by Frank O'Donnell, a seasoned clean-air campaigner in Washington. Like me, he sees substantial potential benefits, and potential income, in public monitoring for natural gas leaks, which is particularly easy to do with infrared cameras, through which such emissions are as visible as smoke (as seen in the video below, which was shot for the Environmental Protection Agency). I first toyed with this notion, and the possibility that citizens could collect a bounty (as has been the case with water pollution laws) on Twitter last year: Here's O'Donnell's view of the idea, which he says has more value than ever given the limited resources for conventional oversight: Leaders of big environmental groups that poured money into President Obama's re-election might have reason to gnash their teeth behind closed doors. Any hope about quick action in a second Obama term to crack down on carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants seems doomed to disappointment. There's widespread expectation that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson may soon be moving on - a move that could be read as a sign that the President doesn't plan to bring his A Game to environmental protection in the second term. As if to confirm that perception, the President threw cold water at his Nov. 14 press conference on the idea that dealing with climate change would be a priority. To put a specific point on it, EPA's top air regulator, Gina McCarthy, told utility regulators Nov. 13 that it would be "at least several years" before EPA addressed a top priority of environmentalists: carbon emission standards for existing coal-fired power plants. While we endure the long, long wait, it might be time to consider direct citizen action to reduce climate change emissions. One option alluded to earlier in these pages could be citizen patrols to check for methane leaks from natural gas facilities: drilling operations, compressing stations or pipelines. Methane, of course, is a potent greenhouse gas. And there is evidence that a lot more methane is leaking from fracking than officially acknowledged. But it doesn't have to be that way. Citizens could take direct action to reduce the leakage. There is certainly precedent in other federal environmental law for aggressive citizen action. For example, citizen enforcement has long been a key component of the Clean Water Act as a "watershed watchdogs" supplement and often prompt official government cleanup action. Similar watchdog patrols ("methane monitors?") could be deployed with some financial incentives under the Clean Air Act. A little-known and, to my knowledge, never used, provision of the Act is designed to spur citizen action: (f) Awards The Administrator may pay an award, not to exceed $10,000, to any person who furnishes information or services which lead to a criminal conviction or a judicial or administrative civil penalty for any violation of this subchapter or subchapter III, IV-A, V, or VI of this chapter enforced under this section. Such payment is subject to available appropriations for such purposes as provided in annual appropriation Acts. Any officer,[3] or employee of the United States or any State or local government who furnishes information or renders service in the performance of an official duty is ineligible for payment under this subsection. The Administrator may, by regulation, prescribe additional criteria for eligibility for such an award [reference, page 73]. This sort of sleuthing doesn't have to involve trespassing. Infrared cameras can and do spot methane leaks (see here and here). Would such a bounty program make financial sense for the government? You bet! The Clean Air Act specifically gives the E.P.A. administrator authority to "issue an administrative order against any person assessing a civil administrative penalty of up to $25,000, per day of violation." So aggressive citizen enforcement could not only reduce climate changing emissions, but reduce the federal deficit. There's one last relevant thought, related to a Government Accountability Office investigation that I wrote on in 2009 in a post titled "Keeping Natural Gas in Pipelines, Not Air." The resulting report looked into the amount of money lost to taxpayers from leaks during careless gas drilling on federal lands. The theory is simple: Any gas lost to leakage represents a loss of your and my property and the revenue stream it's supposed to generate. At the time, Dan Haas, a G.A.O. spokesman, explained it this way: "Since it's your asset and mine, you want to make sure they do it right." In any state where a severance tax is paid by gas companies on the gas they extract, any losses -- as on federal lands -- would represent squandered revenue for the state. What state wouldn't want citizen methane hunters out there helping to identify such losses? I'm running this post by some environmental lawyers and campaigners to get some sense of whether this can take hold in the real world.