An Ohio County senator involved in drafting Marcellus shale legislation in West Virginia figures the interim committee "is within three or four amendments of being finished."

"People get frustrated because the process seems to be taking so long," said Sen. Orphy Klempa, D-Ohio. "But truly, it's because we want to make sure we produce the best piece of legislation we can. We don't want at the end of the day to see we've made a mistake and have to go through the process to fix it."

The 10-member joint committee began its work four months ago, using as its starting point a proposal that passed the state Senate but didn't make it out of the house before the closing bell of the last legislative session.

Since then, they've agreed to about two dozen amendments.

"Look at the amendments, we've done things like take the well pads - currently, they can't be within 200 feet of a residence - and moved them out to 625 feet from homes and barns that house (livestock)," he said. "We came up with some pretty good regulations on water supplies - they can't drill within 250 feet of a well, or 1,000 feet from a public water source. We even put language in there for folks who fish for trout, to protect their waterways you can't drill within 300 feet of a trout stream."

Klempa said committee members are as frustrated as the general public that they haven't finished work on the proposed regulations, but said given the number of stakeholder groups who will be impacted by the decisions they make, it's no easy task.

"With the average piece of legislation you don't have the amount of stakeholders you have in the Marcellus drilling process," he said. "There's the drillers themselves, the industry, but you also have the people who own the surface rights but not mineral rights, because they're the ones who have the pads on their property, the trucks, the lights. You also have to protect the mineral owners as well, because even though they don't own the surface they have every right to get to their oil. You have environmentalists concerned with air and water quality, making sure (the drilling) doesn't harm our environment or at least keeps any harm to a minimum. And you have the people who live in these areas, along roads that hundreds of trucks travel when they deliver equipment, sand, chemicals - everything it takes to prepare the pads, excavate them and get them ready. There are just so many people affected by the process.

"I think at the last meeting a lot of us, including me, emphasized to the committee that we're starting to get frustrated, our constituents are tired of excuses. We need to move forward, but we need to move forward in a responsible manner," he said.

Klempa said it's important that the committee finish its work so lawmakers can have time to study the joint committee's recommendations before making any decisions. Once they have a working document the governor has said he will call the Legislature into special session, which he said is critical.

"It's so important to the state that we don't want this to get lost in the regular session," he said. "With a special session, the whole Legislature is focused on one piece of legislation.

"What we want to do with the Marcellus is create jobs. We want to minimize risk with the industry so we can go forward and create jobs. And if we can have an energy source in this country, one that doesn't depend on the Middle East, it would be fantastic. There are so many good things we can do if we do this right," he added.