The potential energy bonanza in southern New York”™s backyard ”“ the Marcellus shale formation ”“ could be off the table as a viable energy option, a victim of water concerns.
In a ruling last week, the state Department of Environmental Conservation said each well head in the watershed ”“ designed to pump chemicals and water under pressure into the shale to fracture it and release natural gas ”“ would need its own environmental review process.
The 2,000-square-mile Croton and Catskill watersheds provide water to a million residents of Westchester, Dutchess and Putnam counties, plus another 8.2 million in New York City. A second, smaller watershed feeding Syracuse area spigots is similarly affected. The east-side-of-the-Hudson Croton watershed is not above the Marcellus formation.
Though not an outright ban, the state”™s environmental review process is rigorous, expensive and time-consuming.
Tarrytown-based Riverkeeper in a written statement said, “While Riverkeeper will continue to seek an outright ban on drilling in the New York City 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.”
“But the devil”™s in the details as to what that separate permitting process will entail and how much of an obstacle it will present to developers,” said Riverkeeper President Alex Matthiessen in the same statement.
The Marcellus shale is most prominent toward the watershed”™s western extremes and then along New York”™s Southern Tier.
The downside of the process called fracking is the potential for contaminated water. The Daily News reported recently that in Pennsylvania ”“ also underpinned by Marcellus shale ”“ the process has led to an economic boom “as well as contamination of rivers and drinking water.”
Fracking ”“ also called hydrofracking ”“ is alleged to possess another headline-grabbing attribute: earthquakes. A pair of towns in Switzerland and Texas last year became the focus of media reports after post-fracking earthquakes appeared. Cleburne, Texas, had never experienced an earthquake in its 140-year history until engineers began fracking the Barnett shale beneath it in 2001. The Barnett formation is said to possess 30-trillion cubic feet of gas. (The U.S. Geologic Survey estimates the Marcellus shale possesses a bit less than 2-trillion cubic feet of gas.)
A series of small earthquakes followed the fracking. There was no visible damage above-ground, but Bluedaze, a drilling watchdog group operating under the banner “Drilling Reform for Texas,” speculated the real damage could be unseen: to pipes and well casings that would leak unseen.
Speaking with The New York Times, Jim Smith of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York said there was “not a lot of interest in the watershed” from a fracking perspective, at least for now.
And Chesapeake Energy Corp, which holds drilling leases near the Catskills watershed said, “We can do it safely, but the rock quality is not there, and we said we wouldn”™t, so we won”™t.”
Noting nearly 70 percent of the land in the watershed is privately held, Alexander “Pete” Grannis, DEC commissioner, said the scrupulous application of current laws made sense as compared with an outright ban, which could have led to lawsuits. “An outright ban risks very serious litigation,” he told the Times.
