ATLANTA — Plans to regulate fracking in Georgia have been met with unease from lawmakers wary of expanding the state’s role in regulating a new industry.

“I’m certainly leery of EPA, and I’m just about as leery of EPD,” Rep. Don Parsons, R-Marietta, said during a legislative meeting Wednesday, referring to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state Environmental Protection Division.

Parsons, chairman of the House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee, said he is reluctant to grant seemingly “open ended” authority to the state division.

The controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which uses a mixture of water, sand and chemicals to break up rock and free natural gas or oil underground, is not happening in Georgia.

There’s concern that could change if the price of natural gas makes it more attractive.

Already, prospectors have shown interest in the Conasauga shale formation in northwest Georgia, which is believed to hold as much as 625 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Environmentalists warn that the state’s current regulations do not do enough to protect the water supply from the effects of fracking, and 11 local governments have formally asked lawmakers not to wait around to address that.

“We can’t frack in Georgia with the laws that exist now and have clean water,” Joe Cook, with the Coosa River Basin Initiative, said Wednesday.

“The legislation does not say you can’t frack on your property,” he added. “It says that if you’re going to frack on your property, here’s what you need to do to protect the rights of all those people around you that you might be impacting.”

The proposal, filed this month, empowers state environmental regulators to create a board to review and issue permits, but only after the state has received more than a dozen applications in one year.

The state geologist — now the only person on staff poised to handle the workload — would join three of the governor’s appointees on the board.

The agency would also be tasked with drawing up the details on how to address issues like groundwater monitoring and disposal of the chemicals used during the process.

The measure would raise the permit fee from $25 to $500 and charge a severance tax on oil and gas removed from the ground. That tax would be 3 percent, with local governments receiving one-third of its proceeds.

Under the proposal, local governments would have the authority to prohibit fracking.

“I’m not going to be a part of affecting cities and counties in a negative way, if I can help it,” said Rep. John Meadows, R-Calhoun, who is carrying the bill.

Meadows, who is chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, which decides which bills will go on to the full House for a vote, told colleagues that the fracking regulations are being sought out of “an abundance of caution.”

“About the best natural resource you’ve got is water,” he said.

Meadow’s bill is still in Parsons’ committee.

Industry representatives pushed back against it, though, saying it sours the tone of the state’s current law, which dates to 1975, and sends an unfriendly message to business.

Scott Tolleson, with the Municipal Gas Authority of Georgia, told lawmakers the current law does a “pretty good job of putting a fence around the oil and gas exploration industry.”

Tolleson’s group represents 66 systems in the state, including about a half-dozen in northwest Georgia. He said members have concerns about the proposal.

“They know that they have a tremendous resource under their feet, and they want to make sure that we do nothing to prohibit them from getting to that if the economics ever work,” he said.

Tolleson said fracking — if it ever even happens — is probably decades away.

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.