State Rep. Joe Hamm, R-Hepburn Township, brought an important, urgent warning to the Williamsport-Lycoming Chamber of Commerce: Legislation in the state House would effectively place a moratorium on new natural gas drilling in our state.

State Sen. Gene Yaw, R-Loyalsock Township, echoed Hamm’s concerns in a report in Thursday’s edition.

“Make no mistake. House Bill 170 is a ban on natural gas development in Pennsylvania. It is horrible legislation from an environmental, economic and property rights perspective,” Yaw said.

Proponents of the legislation want to “kill” the gas industry, Hamm said, as recorded in the Oct. 27 edition of the Sun-Gazette.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” he added.

It especially, in our eyes, doesn’t make sense when reflecting on a commentary in the same edition from Linnea Lueken of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and Tim Benson of the Heartland Institute.

Lueken and Benson chronicled the decades of evidence that natural gas drilling remains safe, with minimal risks to public health or the environment.

“Since 2010, there have been more than two dozen peer-reviewed studies and assessments from experts determining the fracking process is not a systemic threat to groundwater,” Benson and Lueken wrote. “Some of these come from prestigious research institutions like Yale University, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Others come from nonprofit agencies, and others still come from state and federal agencies.”

The natural gas industry, as Hamm noted, creates hundreds of thousands of jobs in a state and offers the public affordable heating and energy. Its rise in Pennsylvania has been a blessing.

We hope our legislators continue their important work defending this industry so that it can continue to be an economic engine in our region and a source of affordable energy around the world.