DRBC adds 30 days to drilling comment period
The Delaware River Basin Commission approved a 30-day extension of the public comment period for its proposed natural gas drilling regulations on Wednesday.
The extension had been requested by lawmakers and dozens of environmental organizations but opposed by a coalition of Marcellus Shale drillers, who said that an extension would “undermine dialogue on these proposed regulations by granting those with the least involvement and direct affiliation with the river basin disproportionate impact.”
Commissioners from Delaware, New Jersey, New York and the federal government voted for the extension during a meeting in New Jersey on Wednesday. The commissioner from Pennsylvania opposed it.
Written comments on the draft rules will now be accepted until April 15.
The commissioners did not schedule additional public hearings on the draft regulations as the environmental groups requested.
Three hearings were held last week in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but the groups asked for more hearings in more regions of the basin, including New York City and Philadelphia, “the two largest population centers that rely on the Delaware River for water supplies.”
The Marcellus Shale Coalition sent a letter to each of the commission members last Friday saying an extension of the comment period would “detract from the voices of the key stakeholders heard throughout the process.”
“Those with the greatest stake – including landowners, residents of the basin, and our member companies who are investing capital and creating jobs in the region – have been actively reviewing and responding to the proposals since late last year, without the need for an extended comment period,” coalition president Kathryn Klaber wrote.
The text of the proposed regulations and a link to submit comments electronically are at www.drbc.net. About 2,500 comments have been submitted to the commission so far.
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: March 3, 2011
llegere@timesshamrock.com
http://citizensvoice.com/news/drilling/drbc-adds-30-days-to-drilling-comment-period-1.1113198#axzz1FY5MNqYe
Forum to Address Threats to Water Supplies in Delaware Basin
Forum to Address Threats to Water Supplies in Delaware Basin: Connecting Four States for Drinking Water Protection
Release date: 03/02/2011
Contact Information: David Sternberg 215-814-5548 sternberg.david@epa.gov
PHILADELPHIA (March 2, 2011) – Threats to sources of drinking water and public health for more than 15 million people in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York will be the focus of a high-level forum in Philadelphia and five satellite locations on March 10.
Government leaders and national water experts will highlight challenges to the quality and quantity of water fed from the Delaware River Basin, a 13,000-square-mile area that includes 838 municipalities in parts of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and New York.
The Delaware River Basin Forum will feature a central session at the WHYY Hamilton Public Media Commons on 150 North 6th St., Philadelphia, where speakers will describe current and emerging impacts on water resources basin-wide. The forum will feature state-of the-art interactive technology to link live to five satellite locations, in four states outlining local drinking water concerns.
At the WHYY venue, Tufts University Professor Jeffrey K. Griffiths, one of the nation’s leading experts on waterborne disease and public health, will make the keynote presentation on “Drinking Water: Fact, Fears and the Future” at 12:15 p.m. Morning presentations will include the impacts to public health in the Delaware River Basin from water use, population growth and climate change, and will feature model water protection efforts in Philadelphia, New York City and Washington Township, NJ. EPA Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin will provide opening remarks at 8:15 a.m.
The satellite locations are in Newark, DE; Reading and Stroudsburg, PA; Bordentown, NJ; and Loch Sheldrake, NY.
Information on the forum, including a full lineup of speakers at the Philadelphia location, agendas and directions for each satellite location and background on issues facing the Delaware River Basin is available at http://www.delawarebasindrinkingwater.org/
Nearly 1,000 community water systems depend on water resources in the Delaware Basin, and the water is used extensively for recreation, fisheries and wildlife, energy, industry and navigation.
The Delaware River Basin begins in the Catskill Mountains in New York State and courses through 13,500 square miles of rural and urban landscapes to the Atlantic Ocean.
The forum is sponsored by the Source Water Collaborative, a coalition of 23 national organizations and agencies united to protect sources of drinking water. Local hosts for the forum include the US EPA (Region II and Region III), state environmental and health agencies of Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, and the Delaware River Basin Commission.
Polarized hearing brings drilling debate to the Delaware River Basin
HONESDALE – Natural gas drilling in the Delaware River Basin will either save or devastate a region whose fate is in the hands of the interstate commission that regulates water quality there, according to the polarized testimony given by representatives of both sides of the drilling debate during hearings at Honesdale High School on Tuesday.
About 90 people spoke at an afternoon session attended by more than 300 people. It was one of four hearings held by the Delaware River Basin Commission in Honesdale and Liberty, N.Y. on Tuesday about proposed natural gas drilling regulations that would apply to the 13,539-square-mile watershed where drilling has largely been on hold while the commission develops its rules.
The basin contains most of Wayne, Pike and Monroe counties as well as slivers of Lackawanna and Luzerne.
If adopted, the regulations will complement rules in place or being developed by state environmental agencies – a necessary overlap because “the Delaware River Basin is a special place,” commission Executive Director Carol R. Collier said before the hearing: it provides drinking water to more than 15 million people and contains waterways whose exceptional value demands extra protection.
But the “redundancy” of regulations was one of the primary criticisms raised by speakers at the afternoon session, when comments were predominantly made by those who welcome the drilling.
Drilling supporters repeated concerns that the commission’s proposed regulations are so stringent that they will prevent drilling in Wayne County, they fail to balance economic concerns with environmental ones, and they take away private property owners’ rights.
“You have the audacity to claim that your proposed regulations prevail over our commonwealth, disregarding our own laws,” Wayne County landowner Carol Woodmansee yelled into the microphone in the high school’s auditorium. “Your true agenda is to never cut a tree, put Wayne County out of business and condemn us to an existence of bucolic poverty.”
The sole gas drilling industry representative – David Callahan of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, which represents most of the major operators in the state – gave an outline of the industry’s opposition to the proposed rules, especially a centerpiece of the regulations that would require drillers with more than five well pads to detail in advance their foreseeable activity in a defined geographic area, including each well pad, access road, pipeline and compressor station.
“The requirement of a ‘Natural Gas Development Plan’ is unworkable, mandating our industry to detail infrastructure plans years prior to any development,” Mr. Callahan said. “Few industries can provide such plans that far in advance.”
The gas drilling coalition also questioned the power the draft regulations give to the DRBC executive director to set standards on a case-by-case basis and whether the commission even has the legal authority to set standards for the siting, design and operation of gas well pads.
Drilling opponents, many wearing “Don’t Drill the Delaware” stickers, expressed frustration that the commission developed the draft regulations before any studies of the cumulative impact of natural gas operations on the watershed have begun.
They also argued the proposed rules rely too much on the industry to police itself and ignore what they say are inherent risks in the drilling process that will inevitably lead to accidents and contamination.
“These rules will not prevent individual catastrophic pollution events, and they also will not prevent the cumulative environmental degradation that you are supposed to prevent,” Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, said as a handful of audience members raised small signs that read “Do No Harm.”
“The DRBC is our only defense against gasland, and we will not let you sacrifice our water for gas,” she said.
The audience at the afternoon session largely honored rules that barred protests and heckling, save for a few jibes at “Gasland” filmmaker Josh Fox, who testified against the drilling, and a comment that the commission is like “a manure salesman with a mouthful of samples.” Drilling supporters wore neon stickers that read, “I support NG in the DRB,” and someone snuck one onto the back of outspoken drilling opponent James Barth’s jacket.
Speakers lined up in the cold two hours before the doors opened at 12:30 p.m. to ensure a spot at the podium, which was first come, first served.
One request made by drilling opponents, for more time for public comment and more public hearings, will be addressed during a meeting of the river basin’s commissioners on March 2, Ms. Collier said.
About 1,600 written comments had been submitted to the agency before the start of Tuesday’s hearings. The draft regulations and a link to provide written comments online are at www.drbc.net.
By Laura Legere (Staff Writer)
Published: February 23, 2011
Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com
http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/polarized-hearing-brings-drilling-debate-to-the-delaware-river-basin-1.1109222#axzz1EhEszGKz
Pro-drilling group wants states to regulate gas drilling
A coalition of landowners in the Delaware River Basin plans to tell the interstate agency that regulates water quality in the basin to stop trying to regulate natural gas drilling.
Instead, the pro-drilling group suggests the Delaware River Basin Commission renegotiate and strengthen its agreements with its member states, including Pennsylvania and New York, and let those states handle the regulation of gas drilling in the basin’s borders.
“They are going to put in rules that duplicate what the states are already doing, they’ll be forced to create a staff which will be green and inexperienced, and they will not be able to do the job,” Peter Wynne, spokesman for the Northern Wayne Property Owners Alliance, said Friday after the coalition held a press briefing in Honesdale about its criticisms.
The group, which finds the commission’s proposed drilling regulations “totally unworkable,” will be among many concerned citizens, lawmakers and groups that will offer comment on the draft rules in written testimony and at public hearings next week.
The proposed rules are available for review at www.drbc.net.
A set of local hearings will be held at Honesdale High School at 1:30 and 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Published: February 20, 2011
http://standardspeaker.com/news/pro-drilling-group-wants-states-to-regulate-gas-drilling-1.1107714
Basin commission issues watershed drilling rules while N.Y. officials call for delay
http://www.strausnews.com/articles/2010/12/17/pike_county_courier/news/2.txt
December 16, 2010
buy Latuda 80 mg Turbulent week in natural gas drilling issue
Basin commission issues watershed drilling rules while N.Y. officials call for delay
West Trenton, N.J. For better or worse, rhetoric turned to action this past week as the Delaware River Basin Commision (DRBC) issued rules for the controversial horizontal drilling process for natural gas.
According to DRBC, the ruling “applies to all natural gas development projects involving siting, construction, or use of production, exploratory, or other wells in the basin regardless of the target geologic formation, and to water withdrawals, well pad and related activities, and wastewater disposal activities comprising part of, associated with, or serving such projects.”
Early responses were predictably mixed as proponents in New York and Pennsylvania saw the rules as a break in a logjam that would allow development of leases and new economic activity.
Opponents point to widespread instances of ground water pollution from chemicals pumped into drilling holes to “frack” or break up and separate gas in the Marcellus shale formation. They noted that the rules will allow companies with large areas of contiguous leased properties to drill throughout their holdings with a single permit.
Reviewers continue to evaluating the new rules but N.Y. opponents say despite their content, they should not have been issued prior to the completion of environmental studies.
The DRBC rules were issued Dec. 9, days after passage of a three-month moratorium on all gas drilling by N.Y. State Legislature and a letter to the commission from N.Y. Governor David Paterson asking for a delay in the rulemaking until state and city studies were completed.
In asking for delay and consultation, Paterson wrote on Dec. 6 that, “DRBC appears intent on going forward with a regulatory program that would not have the advantage of the full investigations and public deliberations taking place in New York.”
New York State earlier decided that separate environmental reviews would be necessary for any natural gas projects that might be proposed within the unfiltered New York City drinking water watershed surrounding its upstate reservoirs and the DRBC rules have ceded lead decision making to the various state governments.
Still, N.Y. City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote on Nov. 17, also asking for delay during ongoing studies, “Because full-scale development of natural gas exploitation in the watershed could degrade water quality, a rush to regulate and drill risks the long-term viability of one of the most important drinking water sources in the United States”.
The mayor said the “stakes are high” and that billions have been invested in clean water in the Delaware River watershed, which provides drinking water for some 15 million people.
Paterson on Dec. 11 vetoed the state moratorium bill and issued an executive order which would prohibit horizontal fracking gas exploration until July 1, while allowing continuing operation of conventional vertical gas drilling.
The full text of the 83-page document is online at http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/notice_naturalgas-draftregs.htm .
There will be a 90-day comment period, with written comments, via surface mail and e-mail through the DRBC Web site, accepted through the close of business (5 p.m.) March 16. Other forms of comment will not be accepted.
DRAFT NATURAL GAS DEVELOPMENT REGULATIONS
From the Delaware River Basin Commission’s Web Site
http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/
how to buy Neurontin online DRAFT NATURAL GAS DEVELOPMENT REGULATIONS
posted December 9, 2010
Written comments accepted through 5 p.m. March 16, 2011. Three public hearings will be scheduled; details will be released as soon as they are confirmed.
Please note that this public rulemaking process must be completed prior to the Commissioners taking any action on the proposed regulations. Such action will be taken at a duly noticed public meeting of the Commission at a future date.
http://www.state.nj.us/drbc/notice_naturalgas-draftregs.htm
Water agency to publish gas drilling regulations
http://online.wsj.com/article/AP01539f691bec4cc08103242571a7f2e2.html
DECEMBER 9, 2010
Water agency to publish gas drilling regulations
WEST TRENTON, N.J. — The agency that oversees water quality and quantity in the Delaware River basin says it has finished work on proposed regulations for the natural gas drilling industry.
The Delaware River Basin Commission announced Wednesday that draft regulations will be available for public review beginning at 9 a.m. Thursday.
The commission has declared a moratorium on Marcellus Shale drilling projects in the Delaware River basin until the rulemaking process is complete. The panel has jurisdiction because the drilling process will require the withdrawal of huge amounts of water from the watershed’s streams and rivers. The commission has also cited the potential for groundwater and surface water contamination.
Drilling is in full swing elsewhere in Pennsylvania.
The DRBC is a compact agency representing the federal government and the states of Delaware, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.