After campaigning on a promise not to tax the Marcellus Shale gas industry, Governor Tom Corbett unveiled a proposal Monday that would allow counties to impose impact fees on drilling companies.

The Governor outlined his plan in Pittsburgh.  Besides the impact fee, which would help regulate drilling and fix any environmental damages, The plan also calls for a separate fee assessed on each well site.   Those fees could generate up to $200,000,000 a year. 

The Governor's plan was based on recommendations made by a Marcellus shale advisory commission Corbett appointed earlier this year.  

One commission member said the job now is to get it passed.

Dr. Terry Engelder, Penn State University geosciences professor, said, "The governor charged us to get this done in 120 days, and I know that he's hopeful that meaningful legislation will be in place by the end of the year."

Engelder said Corbett accepted 94 of the Marcellus Shale advisory commission's 96 recommendations, from more distance between gas wells and water wells and streams, to bigger bonds, and allowing higher civil penalties and violation fines.

Engelder said many safety recommendations were influenced by last June's EOG well blowout in the Moshannon state forest where raw natural gas and contaminated water spewed for 16 hours.

"Each well be explicitly located using a GPS system, and a set of maps in which emergency responders, ambulances, the hospital, the fire department, the police knew exactly where that well was, because there have been a lot of wells put in, in the deep forest areas of Pennsylvania, that are not particularly well located on maps."

Corbett pledged against a drilling tax in his run for governor, drawing hundreds of protestors at February’s inauguration.

He told Channel 6 News a tax was off the table when asked at AG Progress Days in August.

Despite the change of heart, Engelder doesn't think a county-implemented impact fee will scare away business.

"A couple of CEOs actually got up and said tax us. We anticipate this is going to happen, we've already written a budget that assumes this is going to happen,” said Engelder.

The policy-oriented proposals can be changed by state agencies, but it will take the legislature to enact the rest, including the impact fee.