By Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN — State environmental officials announced new rules Friday designed to make it extremely difficult for natural gas companies to use a controversial drilling practice near the city's upstate water supply.
City and state officials feared companies using a drilling method called "hydrofracking" — a process where water and chemicals are blasted at rock to extract natural gas — on a section of the Marcellus Shale would contaminate the unfiltered upstate watershed used for drinking water in New York City.
But a new two-tiered review process throws up a bureaucratic phalanx state officials designed to deter natural gas prospecting in the Catskill/Delaware watershed. Companies wanting to drill in the city's watershed would have to conduct separate costly and time-consuming environmental impact studies for each well they wanted to drill. For other areas, companies would have to rely on the state to tell them where to drill.
City lawmakers and officials praised the state's new rules.
"The watershed provides clean drinking water to over 8 million New Yorkers," City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said in a statement. "Drilling for natural gas in the watershed using a risky technique known as hydraulic fracturing could have widespread detrimental environmental and health effects for residents."
City officials had been railing against hydrofracking upstate for months, with Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others calling for an outright ban.
Stringer said during his “Kill the Drill” campaign this year that if hydrofracking in the watershed contaminated New York City’s drinking water, it would cost taxpayers between $10 billion and $30 billion to build a purification system. The state said this is no longer a concern.
Still, Stringer is pulling for a ban.
“A complete ban on watershed drilling was the right thing a year ago, it’s the right thing today, and it will remain the right thing for as long as we debate hydraulic fracturing in New York,” Stringer said. “The state should go the full distance and enact a ban.”
