(AP)  HARRISBURG, Pa. — Natural gas-drilling opponents at a raucous protest rally Tuesday warned Pennsylvania state lawmakers returning from their holiday break that pending bills to regulate the industry would pre-empt local efforts to control the activity.

About 150 people, including members of environmentalist groups and citizen activists, waved placards bearing messages such as "Kill the Bill" and "Our Towns, Our Voice," and cheered speakers who attacked two competing bills to strengthen regulation of the fast-growing industry and impose an impact fee.

The environment was a loser going into the budget discussions; the Legislature simply piled on $6 million in additional cuts to Gov. Corbett's $31 million.

There was hardly a line item in the Environmental Protection budget the legislature did not cut further, with $1.4 million newly cut from department operations and an additional $600,000 from environmental program management.

"These legislators are choosing to reduce our protections at a time when most Pennsylvanians are looking for more oversight on pollution," said Myron Arnowitt, state director of the environmental group Clean Water Action.

The shale gas extraction industry is still in its infancy in Europe, but in the United States the practice has been going on since the 1990s. And depending upon whom you ask, the enormous deposits of natural gas running underneath the country either represent the future of U.S. energy security or a dire threat to the environment.

As European countries grapple with how -- and in some cases, whether -- to exploit their own natural-gas deposits, the U.S. experience with the relatively new technique of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" -- the controversial but effective method of extracting gas from rock buried a kilometer or more underground -- is being watched carefully.