NORWICH – It’s two months until the state’s environmental conservation agency is due to release updated regulations for permitting high water, deep shale drilling for natural gas, and groups on both sides of the hydraulic fracturing debate are turning up the heat.
After all, New Yorkers who have already leased their land, the multi-national energy companies that are poised to drill, and those who oppose fracturing’s risk to the water, ground and air have already waited three years for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to act.
The DEC has taken that long to study the impacts of the technologically-enhanced method for releasing gas from tight shale formations located nearly a mile or more underground. What’s concerning is the 5 million gallons of water needed per well, the chemicals mixed in companies’ drilling solutions, and worries about safe handling of subsurface liquids, mud and rock particles that come up with the gas afterwards – some of which contain toxic and radioactive elements.
Earlier this month, a New York Times series of articles zeroed in on water contamination claims and suspected hydraulic fracturing accidents that have occurred in states that already permit horizontal shale drilling. The paper found that wastewater from 42 wells in Pennsylvania exceeded the federal drinking-water limit for radium; four exceeded the limit for uranium, 128 wells exceeded the limit for gross alpha – a type of radiation; and 41 exceeded the limit for benzene.
The pro-drilling community – including the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection – immediately refuted numerous aspects of the Time’s data. In an Albany Times Union article, New York’s principal geologist Taury Smith referred to the Marcellus Shale (one of three shale formations beneath the surface in Chenango County) as a “huge gift” in the fight against climate change, and referred to claims in other states that groundwater has been contaminated by hydrofracturing as “exaggerated problems.”
Engineers and scientists from renowned universities also spoke out this month. On handling well flowback, Carnegie Mellon University Environmental Engineering Professor Kelvin Gregory reported at a conference that nothing in formation water should be difficult for environmental engineers to handle. On the amount of water used, David Yoxtheimer, a hydrologist with Penn State University's Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, said companies drilling in the Marcellus Shale play are recycling about two-thirds of the wastewater that returns to the surface, thereby reducing the overall environmental footprint of the industry. Smith said the average drilling complex in Pennsylvania from 2008-2009 (which could contain multiple wells) used 8.4 million gallons per day of water in the Susquehanna River basin, compared to 20 million per day for golf courses.
Meanwhile, last week, members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate reintroduced the so called FRAC Act, a bill designed to protect drinking water from gas drilling pollution. Congressman Maurice Hinchey and Chuck Schumer are two New York representatives supporting the legislation. The Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act would close so-called Bush-era oil and gas industry loopholes in the Safe Drinking Water Act and require disclosure of chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing.
A former Bush EPA official who oversaw the release of the 2004 EPA report that determined hydraulic fracturing was safe for drinking water has admitted that the exemption the FRAC act seeks to repeal was “broader than it should have been,” a release from Congressman Hinchey’s office stated.
