Drilling Near NYC Aquifers Approved with Rules

By Jad Mouawad, New York Times

After months of deliberations, state environmental regulators on Wednesday released long-awaited rules governing natural gas production in upstate New York, including provisions to oversee drilling operations near New York City’s water supplies.

The regulations, in a report requested last year by Gov. David A. Paterson, do not ban drilling near the watersheds, as many environmental advocates had urged. But the report sets strict rules on where wells can be drilled and requires companies to disclose the chemicals they use.

The prospect of gas drilling in upstate New York has stirred strong opposition from a coalition of environmental groups, city politicians and residents, who fear that expansive operations of this sort could contaminate the city’s drinking water. But it has gained firm supporters upstate who say the economic benefits of a new gas boom far outweigh any potential risks, especially given the weakness of the economy.

The gas industry has argued that vast gas reserves could be found in the Marcellus Shale basin, which extends for roughly 600 miles through Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.

The million-acre watershed supplies 15 million people, including 9 million New Yorkers. The Department of Environmental Conservation, which issued the preliminary guidelines, said that it found no reasonable basis for a drilling ban near the watershed, but that measures were necessary to allay concerns raised last year in public hearings.

Under the new rules, for example, drillers would be required to disclose the chemical fluids used for each well. Buffer zones would be created around reservoirs and aqueducts in the watershed. Wells drilled within a 1,000-foot corridor of underground tunnels that carry drinking water to New York City would require special approval, and in some cases, state inspectors would have to be present during some phases of operations.

“We need to have a zero-risk policy here, and it is not appropriate to allow drilling in such a unique and extraordinarily valuable resource,” said Kate Sinding, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The record in other states is so abysmal, and it doesn’t take much to do better than other states.”

The Manhattan Borough President, Scott M. Stringer, said the protections outlined did not go far enough and could expose the city to billions of dollars of expenses if it needed to invest in water filtration plants to counter contamination.

“A buffer zone is not a ban,” he said. “Quite frankly, a lot of these are half-baked measures that put the watershed at risk.”

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Source: New York Times