Safeguards and local control

Highlights from the scoping hearing

By FRITZ MAYER

LOCH SHELDRAKE, NY — “Repetition is a form of emphasis.” That’s what Dr. Bill Pammer said recently, and if true, residents and officials emphasized a number of concerns while testifying at the scoping hearing at Sullivan County Community College on December 4.

Pammer, the planning commissioner for Sullivan County, spoke for the county and repeated a concern that he has touched on in the past. He urged the NY Department of Environmental Conservation to consider the impact of all facets of gas drilling in creating the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Survey that will cover horizontal gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale. In a draft document, the DEC indicated it would not consider the environmental impacts of gathering pipelines and compression stations that are part of the drilling process because those elements are regulated by the Public Service Commission.

If drilling comes on the scale imagined by the gas industry, the gathering pipelines could run for hundreds of miles. Pammer said that the entire drilling process must be examined as a whole, in order to avoid a segmenting of the oversight. Others who testified repeated this concern.

Another concern that was mentioned multiple times was that local governments should have input and/or more control over the drilling process. In New York State, many aspects of development are regulated at the local level. But in the arena of oil and gas exploration, unlike any other development or business activity, local governments have been stripped of most local control, except for some that is related to roads and real estate taxation.

Several speakers requested the DEC to examine the notion of extending more home rule powers to the towns, or at least adopting rules that would require the DEC or gas companies to inform towns about when applications for drilling have been made, or when permits for drilling have been granted.

Another major concern was the staffing levels of the DEC. According to testimony at the forum, there are 16 DEC inspectors available to inspect gas and oil wells. With more than 14,000 wells active in the state, and with thousands more expected in the Marcellus Shale, many argued that the DEC does not have enough inspectors to adequately protect against environmental degradation. Those making this point included Bethel councilperson-elect Denise Frangipane and Bruce Ferguson of Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy.

One impact that has received little mention in previous meetings was psychological stress. Dr. Susan Kennedy of Wolf Lake, who identified herself as a clinical psychologist, said that in other areas where concentrated horizontal shale drilling has occurred, people suffered from a large amount of stress. With a large influx of transient workers and the accompanying increase of crime, coupled with the 24-hours-a-day activity of trucks, drilling rigs, helicopters and other equipment, she said, “people feel like they’re living in a war zone,” and they will suffer negative psychological impacts.

Perhaps the most impassioned testimony of the evening came from Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of Delaware Riverkeeper. She noted that monitoring wells, which could alert officials to contamination, are not required with gas drilling operations. Like several others, she criticized the DEC for not holding hearings in the communities of millions of downstream residents, such as New York City, who get their drinking water from the Delaware River Basin. She also pointed out that the question of what to do with the millions of gallons of fracking fluid and produced water that is associated with each well has not been sufficiently answered.

Carluccio, and others such as Barbara Arrindell of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, noted that the PA Department of Environmental Preservation on October 22 ordered nine sewage treatment plants to dramatically reduce the amount of such fluid they process from as much as 20 percent in volume to as little as one percent. The reason was because the treatment of such large quantities of gas-drilling-related fluids resulted in contamination of the drinking water that comes from the Monogahela River in the western part of the state.