ALBANY – The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation opened a more than 90-day public comment period on its revised draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement, DEC Commissioner Joe Martens said yesterday. In addition, the agency will issue its proposed regulations governing high-volume hydraulic fracturing in early October.
“Throughout this process, DEC’s number one priority is to protect the state’s drinking water and environment in concert with exploring options to safely and efficiently extract the state’s natural gas. This will enable New York’s economy to benefit from this resource and the job opportunities that development is expected to bring,” Martens said. “We look forward to receiving comments from the public that will help inform the final conditions for high-volume hydraulic fracturing in New York state. The proposed environmental mitigation measures and the regulations that codify those measures go hand in hand. It makes sense to move forward with them together and hold simultaneous public comment periods and hearings.”
The department had originally set the comment period at 60 days, but said a final decision on the length as well as where to host public hearings would be announced when the document was released. The public comment period for the revised draft SGEIS began yesterday and concludes Dec. 12. The public comment period for the regulations will begin in early October and will run concurrently with the SGEIS public comment period.
Chenango County’s Economic Development Consultant Steven Palmatier said Commissioner Martens’ extension of the amount of time was “more than adequate.”
“Allowing everyone to voice their opinion one more time ... it had to be done,” he said.
The DEC plans to hold four public hearings in November. The hearings will be held in counties within the Marcellus Shale region, as well as New York City, but the exact dates and locations won’t be known until next month.
Under the public comment schedule, the public will have more than 150 days to review the proposed environmental mitigation measures in the draft SGEIS, which were released July 1, and more than 90 days to review the SGEIS sections and mitigation measures addressing socioeconomic, community character, visual, noise and transportation impacts. Once the comment period is complete, DEC will review the comments on the draft SGEIS and proposed regulations and prepare responses to be released with the final SGEIS. No permits for high- volume hydraulic fracturing will be issued until the SGEIS is finalized and DEC issues the required Findings Statement.
The draft socio-economic analysis of the impacts associated with high-volume hydraulic fracturing activities found that when the well construction rate is at its maximum level, total direct employment could reach 6,198 full-time equivalent workers under a low-development scenario and 24,795 FTE workers under the average-development scenario. These jobs are estimated to bring $419.6 million to $1.7 billion in earnings for the workers.
Construction jobs account for 4,408 to 17,634 FTE positions. These employment figures correspond to the annual construction of 413 horizontal and vertical wells under the low- development scenario and 1,652 horizontal and vertical wells under the average-development scenario. At the peak of development, operational jobs are expected to range from 1,790 FTE workers under the low-development scenario to 7,161 FTE workers under the average- development scenario.
The proposed drilling also could generate additional indirect employment in other sectors of the economy. Indirect employment is expected to range from 7,293 FTE workers under the low-development scenario to an additional 29,174 FTE workers under the average-development scenario with an additional $202.3 million and $809.2 million in earnings.
As far as the proposed job numbers released in the supplement, Chenango County’s Palmatier said they represent a large range based on how fast the development takes place.
