There is a refreshing air of practicality in the creation of voluntary standards for shale-gas production in a cooperative effort involving big oil and gas companies as well as environmental groups.

The Pittsburgh-based group, Center for Sustainable Shale Development, released a tough set of drilling and gas-production standards that are stricter than current state and federal regulations.

The idea behind the proposed set of tough standards is that companies will submit their operations to independent review, based on the new standards. If the operation complies, it will receive the approval of the sustainable shale group, much like electrical appliances can receive the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) seal of approval.

The shale group behind the new voluntary effort includes Shell Oil, Chevron, EQT and Consol energy along with the Environmental Defense Fund, the Clean Air Task Force and the Pennsylvania Environmental Council.

Explaining industry involvement in the two-year effort, oil and gas executives say they recognized the need to do more to assure the public that their companies are working to protect the environment and human health when they extract natural gas from shale deposits using hydrofracturing — commonly known as fracking — technologies.

And on the other side of the cooperative effort, environmental groups say that they understand that with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of natural gas and oil locked in layers of shale and the potential to make the United States energy independent, the shale gas and oil reserves will be developed. With that realistic viewpoint, the environmental groups decided to work with the industry to create safe, but workable, standards.

Too often, the industry and environmental groups appeared to be talking past each other, with “drill baby, drill” coming from one side and “no drilling, anywhere, anytime” coming from the other.

Every large-scale industrial operation and energy development project from deep-ocean drilling to coal mines and nuclear power plants pose their own risks to the environment and humans. The extraction of natural gas and oil using fracking, then, is not much different in terms of risks.

The new standards require drillers to recycle 90 percent of the fracking fluid, to limit the flaring or burning off of methane gas that comes to the surface with natural gas, groundwater monitoring standards, improved well design, use of less toxic fracking fluids and more. The standards are not intended to replace government regulations.

The standards released last week are intended to cover drilling operations in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, where Marcellus Shale drilling activity is concentrated. A similar cooperative effort between gas producers and environmental groups had been proposed in Illinois.

Too often, the industry and environmental groups have just issued competing press releases, without ever bringing about changes to make gas production safer.

The Sierra Club quickly blasted the cooperative group’s efforts, saying “the majority of natural gas should stay in the ground” to avoid climate disaster. But that’s not realistic.

This cooperative approach, involving both industry and environmental groups, is more likely to allow development of our valuable economic resources while protecting the environment and human health.