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State officials responsible for the regulation of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) operations used in the production of oil and gas resources will inevitably confront a key policy issue; that is, to what extent can statewide regulations be developed without reducing land use autonomy typically exercised by local officials? Most state regulators have historically recognized the economic importance of industry jobs and favor the adoption of uniform regulatory requirements even if these rules preempt local policymaking authority. Conversely, many local officials seek to preserve land use autonomy to provide a greater measure of protection for public health and environmental quality goals. This paper examines how public officials in three states--Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Texas--address the question of state control versus local autonomy through their efforts to shape fracking policy decisions. While local officials within Texas have succeeded in developing fracking ordinances with relatively little interference from state regulators, Colorado and Pennsylvania have adopted a tougher policy stance favoring the retention of preemptive oil and gas statutes. Key factors that account for between state differences in fracking policy decisions include the strength of home rule provisions, gubernatorial involvement, and the degree of local experience with industrial economic activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of the volatile organic compound (VOC) mixture in the Houston area makes studies of the air quality in that area very challenging. In this paper, a novel factor analysis model, where the normal chemical mass balance model was augmented by a parallel equation that accounted for wind speed and direction, temperature, and weekend/weekday effects, was fitted with a multilinear engine (ME) to provide identification and apportionment of the VOC sources at the La Porte Municipal Airport site in Houston during the Texas Air Quality Study (TexAQS) 2000. The analysis determined the profiles and contributions of nine sources and the corresponding wind speed, wind direction, temperature, and weekend factors. The reasonableness of these results not only suggests the high resolving power of the expanded factor analysis model for source apportionment but also provides the novel and effective auxiliary information for more specific source identification. In addition, a new approach to estimate the measurement uncertainty and the details of determining the source number and dealing with missing values are also presented as important parts of the data analysis process. This study demonstrates the feasibility of the expanded model to identify sources in complex VOC systems and extract useful information for locating VOC emitters and controlling their emissions in the Houston area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]