Watchdog: New York State Regulation of Natural Gas Wells Has Been "Woefully Insufficient for Decades."

The New York-based Toxics Targeting went through the Department of Environmental Conservation's own database of hazardous substances spills over the past thirty years. They found 270 cases documenting fires, explosions, wastewater spills, well contamination and ecological damage related to gas drilling. Many of the cases remain unresolved. The findings are contrary to repeated government assurances that existing natural gas well regulations are sufficient to safeguard the environment and public health. The state is considering allowing for gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale watershed, the source of drinking water for 15 million people, including nine million New Yorkers.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/10/watchdog_new_york_state_regulatio...

By Tom Wilber twilber@gannett.com November 8, 2009, 7:15 pm

http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20091108/NEWS01/911080372&referrer=...

The state's depiction of a clean, tightly regulated natural gas industry just got a shot of muck in the eye.
As the debate over the merits of Marcellus Shale development reaches a crescendo, an Ithaca researcher has culled a list of 270 files documenting wastewater spills, well contamination, explosions, methane migration and ecological damage related to gas production in the state since 1979.
Walter Hang, president of Toxic Targeting, compiled the files using the Department of Environmental Conservation's own hazard substances spills database.

New York City's abundant, inexpensive water supply could disappear if proposals to drill for natural gas in upstate New York using a process called "hydrofracking" are allowed to go forward. (Photo: Terese Loeb Kreuzer)

New York City's prized tap water, which comes from upstate reservoirs, is under assault. Companies that drill for natural gas want to use a process called "hydrofracking" to access the natural gas in the vast Marcellus Shale, which runs from New York to Tennessee and west to Ohio. It is the biggest natural gas formation in the country and worth a trillion dollars, according to Walter Hang, principal of an environmental data collection company in Ithaca, N.Y. called Toxics Targeting.

If the oil and gas companies succeed in getting New York State regulatory approval to permit fractal drilling, they could pollute New York City's water supply and create monumental problems upstate, where the toxic, radioactive waste water from the drilling would be disposed of.

The public comment period on fractal drilling ends Dec. 31, 2009. Subsequently, the comments will go to New York State's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which will process them. The possible outcome could include anything from adopting an environmental impact statement that would permit the drilling, to rejecting it, especially if the governor so orders. "It's the governor's call," said Mr. Hang. "He runs the DEC. If he decides he doesn't want his administration to do something, it will get yanked."

Fractal drilling in single, vertical wells isn't new in New York State, but the scope of what is now being proposed is new and untried here.

"New York has been mining gas since 1821," Mr. Hang explained, "but they'd drill a well and hit a pocket of gas under pressure, and it would just come up. The Marcellus Shale is almost totally impermeable. If you drill into it, no gas comes out."

To release the gas in the Marcellus Shale, the oil and gas companies would have to drill around one mile into the Earth and then drill horizontally, injecting millions of gallons of sand and water under tremendous pressure into the fissures to hold them open.

"You can't drill a well within 300 feet of a city reservoir and the DEC said they had never had a problem," said Mr. Hang. "But," he continued, "I found a gas problem in Freedom, N.Y. where the gas came blasting out of a 2,000-foot-deep bore hole in a matter of minutes. It went 8,000 feet horizontally and actually impacted 12 homes, a pond, drainage ditches and permanently polluted private water supply wells. It happened in 1996 and the water is still polluted."

The DEC says on its Marcellus Shale home page that other states may have had problems with natural gas drilling but New York State will not because of its superior regulatory system. Mr. Hang disagrees. "The existing regulations are completely inadequate for preventing and requiring the clean up of gas drilling and gas infrastructure problems," he said. "I found 270 massive spills, many of which had never been cleaned up for up to 26 years. This whole effort should be sent back to the drawing board."

In the New York State legislature, Senators Daniel Squadron and Thomas Duane and Assembly Member James Brennan have sponsored bills to protect the New York City watershed by prohibiting drilling for natural gas within five miles of the watershed boundaries and in the Delaware River watershed. Their bills would also increase regulation of hydraulic fracturing in areas where it is permitted. Community Board 1 supports these bills. In a resolution unanimously passed at the last full board meeting on Nov. 24, CB1 stated that it "is concerned that the State of New York, as a landowner, is seeking to close its budget gap in part by leasing mineral rights connected with its public lands at the same time that it is ostensibly protecting the environment for all New Yorkers." The CB1 resolution requested that the law require natural gas drillers, gas aggregators and gas companies to be "responsible for any and all damages, including, but not limited to property and environmental damage which occurs in the process of drilling and transporting natural gas. DEC shall require financial security to ensure that landowners are protected from any contingent liability."

Mr. Hang believes that the bills don't go far enough. No one knows, he said, if a five-mile barrier would be sufficient to protect the water supply.

Steven Lawitts, the acting commissioner for New York City's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), had this to say: "DEP is deeply concerned about the potential impacts that natural gas drilling poses to water quality, available water supply, and critical water supply infrastructure. DEP is conducting a comprehensive review of the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement and will provide extensive comments. On Wednesday, DEP will brief the Water Board on the Final Impact Assessment Report, an in-depth scientific analysis on the impacts of natural gas drilling in the New York City watershed."

If the gas drilling goes through and the New York City water supply becomes contaminated, it will cost billions of dollars to build a filtration plant to supply the city with water, "and it's not necessarily going to render the water safe," said Catherine McVay Hughes, vice chairperson of Community Board 1.

Mr. Hang said there could be other costs associated with the drilling. "Everyone is thinking this is money, money, money," he said, "but the problem is that 100,000 pound trucks [bringing water to the drilling site and taking waste water away] are going to destroy hundreds of structurally deficient bridges. And who's going to deal with the waste water? Who's going to deal with all the infrastructure problems? Suddenly it's not looking like the goose that laid the golden egg anymore."

- Terese Loeb Kreuzer