DEC watershed decision a ploy?

Different rules for different waters

By FRITZ MAYER

NEW YORK STATE — Proponents and opponents have been waiting for nearly two years for the rules that will regulate drilling in the Marcellus Shale in New York. Last week, they learned that the rules for most of the state would be different than those for the land surrounding the New York City Watershed and the Skaneateles Lake Watershed, which provides water for Syracuse.

The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced on April 23 that because of the need to protect those water supplies, the land around them will not be covered by the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) that the DEC has been working on. Instead, any company seeking to perform horizontal drilling with high-volume fracking in those areas “will require a case-by-case environmental review process to establish whether appropriate measures to mitigate potential impacts can be developed.”

The environmental review process for each well will be expensive, and thus will make it less likely that drilling companies will drill in those watersheds. Brad Gill, president of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York, said the reviews will amount to essentially a drilling ban. “It will do irreversible fiscal harm to the local communities that would benefit from tax revenues through drilling, and it will harm landowners who want nothing more than to safely develop their land in a way that’s in the best interest of their families and future generations,” Gill said.

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, who has been calling for a ban in the city watershed, applauded the development, saying, “We firmly believe, based on the best available science and current industry and technological practices, that drilling cannot be permitted in the city’s watershed. We are confident that the additional reviews now required for any drilling proposal in the watershed will lead the state to that same conclusion.”

The reaction from environmental groups ranged from somewhat positive to those who called the move a political ploy.

The Delaware Riverkeeper Network issued a statement that said, “While Riverkeeper will continue to seek an outright ban on drilling in the NYC Watershed, which is the only way to provide absolute and permanent protection, we believe that the state’s decision will create a significant hurdle for oil and gas companies that might have sought permits to drill there.”

Ramsay Adams, the executive director of Catskill Mountainkeeper, said, “There is no way to know the motivations or thinking behind the DEC’s statement; however, it appears as if the DEC is trying to give the impression that there won’t be drilling in the watersheds to remove political pressure from New York City officials.

“It also appears as if the DEC decided to exclude the watersheds from their final GEIS so that they won’t have to address the comments from the comprehensive scientific study that was prepared by the New York City DEP as part of their review of the Draft SGEIS. We would like the DEC to clarify whether or not they will analyze these comments as part of their review process.”

A release from Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy (CCSE) said, “The DEC has been crafty; it didn’t ban fracking in the watershed; that would have raised obvious questions about the safety of the process. Instead, it created a regulatory black hole that will prevent fracking without prohibiting it. This is akin to a corporation settling a lawsuit by paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines without admitting wrongdoing.”

In explaining the decision, the DEC said that one reason for singling out these two watersheds is that the drinking water they provide is non-filtered, and thus they are subject to Filtration Avoidance Determinations. In order to adequately safeguard the continued use of this drinking water, the watersheds need extra protection.

In response, CCSE wrote, “Applying this regulatory exception to unfiltered water supplies was another clever ploy. It permits a benign interpretation of the dangers posed by unconventional drilling: ‘Access roads and well pads could create muddy runoff that would require filtration, and we didn’t want that to happen.’ The real danger to drinking water, toxic contamination, is neatly avoided.”

What about the river

The DEC decision does nothing to protect most of the watershed of the Upper Delaware River, and millions of people, including those in Philadelphia and Trenton, get their drinking water directly from the river. Although that water is filtered, critics say the decision by the DEC makes many people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and in New York outside the two smaller watersheds, second-class citizens when it comes to the protection of their drinking water.

Pat Carullo, co-founder of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, said, “The Upper Delaware River Watershed is the greatest treasure here.” In the wake of the DEC move, his group is going to step up efforts to prevent 14 test wells planned for Wayne County from coming on line. The wells are scheduled to be drilled in less than two months.

Carullo said that the group is going to demand that the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) review the impacts of the wells. The DRBC has said in the past that test wells don’t require DRBC review.