Before drilling, plug some loopholes

(practice some sanity)

By FRED LEBRUN|COMMENTARY
First published in print: Sunday, October 4, 2009
Albany Times Union/timesunion.com

Editorializing in red by Splashdown!

Drilling into a massive natural gas deposit more than a mile under the state's southern tier and and western Catskills will likely begin late spring next year.

That's Brad Gill's best guess, assuming all goes smoothly over the next few months in establishing the state's rules and regs for drilling in the Marcellus Shale region of New York, an area that extends under West Virginia and Pennsylvania as well. Our state's Department of Environmental Conservation started the clock this week by issuing an 809-page draft environmental review that after a 60-day public comment period should lead to those rules and regs by year's end.

Gill is an industry spokesman. He said he hasn't read the DEC's draft proposal yet, but expects it will be tough and comprehensive, and that the industry will rise to whatever demands are made. After all, there are billions of dollars to be made here, by landowners, by the state, by the drilling companies. Billions, over the next 30 or so years.

After the first permits are issued, Gill says, we are apt to see only 10 to 20 wells built over the next two years. "There won't suddenly be an industrial moonscape with thousands of wells going up like some critics have painted," says Gill. "Only a handful of companies have the resources for this sort of high-risk, high-cost venture, and drilling equipment exists in finite numbers."

...

After that, folks, if it all tests out, step aside. It will be the new Gold Rush, and upstate New York will never be the same. Then, there indeed will be thousands of wells on five-acre pads with a criss-cross of unpaved roads leading to them across a vast geography, and for decades.

Is New York ready for this?

Not even close.

In fact, getting rich quick (for some) aside, who is ready for this kind of massive transformation of one's "home turf"?

It's scary how unprepared and vulnerable we are to a wild-cat industry that has a history of pushing hard against any environmental protections in its way. Who or what will protect us?

Foresight? ...can't be hindsight.

First off, let me say emphatically I have no problem with drilling for gas in New York on private property, as long as there are zero environmental consequences to neighbors or public resources, especially water.

...

The contemporary history of hydrofracking for natural gas in Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and, most recently, Pennsylvania, is a mixed bag, but always with an environmental bill attached from spills of polluted wastewater to tainted drinking water and wells, to sediment-clogged streams from unpaved roads.

Hydrofracking requires huge amounts of water, and produces even greater amounts of tainted and sometimes toxic wastewater. Processing plants are beyond capacity already. What are we getting into here?

... the awful truth is the DEC is at historic low employment numbers. We don't have the inspectors to oversee compliance. Without real enforcement, where are we? Depressingly close to self-policing for an industry that raises great concerns.

I am stupified that the DEC environmental review doesn't simply recommend that the Susquehanna and Delaware watersheds be off limits to drilling, period, and state parks and public lands as well.

One of this state's prized resources is potable water in copious quantities. But don't think for a moment that resource is infinite, or untaintable. It's a resource that cries out for much stronger protections than exisit. Even so, why even think of taking a risk with the water supply for the Big Apple?

In fact, why even think of taking a risk with anyone's water supply! Remember paragraph 9... "as long as there are zero environmental consequences to neighbors or public resources, especially water."

So the short of it is, we need a whole lot of hurry-up scrutiny on what the Gas Rush is bringing us in a cumulative and comprehensive way, with an eye toward legislation to plug a lot of holes.

And we need to do so before the first permit is issued. Because once those permits are out there, we are lost.

To read this well reasoned commentary by Fred LeBrun in its entirety, CLICK HERE.

His concerns and observations are right everywhere the gas industry is drilling or planning to drill wells.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!