THE ITHACA JOURNAL
Cornell team concludes DEC ill-equipped to oversee natural gas drilling
http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20091211/NEWS01/912110348/Cornell-team-concludes-DEC-ill-equipped-to-oversee-natural-gas-drilling
By Tom Wilber •[email protected] • December 11, 2009
(Below is a link to the Cornell Law School's Water Law Clinic’s
comments on the dSGEIS*)
ITHACA -- The state's new blueprint for Marcellus Shale development
proposes 187 new tasks to regulate natural gas drilling with no mention
of how they will be completed.
That's the assessment of a team of Cornell University lawyers and
students who tackled the 800-page regulatory proposal -- called the
Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement -- as a class
project.
The pro bono work was done by Cornell Law School's Water Law Clinic to
help the Town of Danby and the Upper Susquehanna Coalition -- a
nonprofit group chartered to protect water resources -- sort through
the dense technical details of Marcellus regulation.
The public has until Dec. 31 to submit written comments regarding the
state Department of Environmental Conservation's plan to oversee
Marcellus development in New York. The shale formation holds the
largest natural gas reserve in the country, running from the Southern
Tier and parts of the Finger Lakes region down through Pennsylvania and
the Appalachian Basin.
Related
Additional tasks required for Marcellus oversight outline by Cornell
Law School's academic team
* Cornell Law School study of the Draft EIS gas well drilling
http://www.theithacajournal.com/assets/doc/CB1483771211.DOC
The findings of the law clinic touch on a recurring theme raised by
stakeholders: How will 17 inspectors in the DEC's Division of Mineral
Resources handle a natural gas industry that is expected to quadruple,
or more, with Marcellus development?
"There is no way they have enough people to visit the sites to make
sure conditions are met," said Keith Porter, an adjunct professor who
worked on the project with five students and Cynthia Bowman, a
full-time faculty member.
Much of the DEC's proposal includes tasks involving firsthand
inspections and detailed spill prevention and mitigation plans on a
site-by-site basis. It also involves assessing and monitoring water
resources to ensure they are not damaged by the industry's need for
huge volumes of fresh water to stimulate gas production through a
process called fracking. The process involves shooting millions of
gallons of chemical solutions into each well, which then regurgitate
brine and wastewater with chemicals, heavy metals and naturally
occurring radioactivity.
(2 of 2)
Industry proponents point to the state's strict regulations and a lack
of spills and incidents in the past. Environmental advocates are
challenging that claim, pointing to hundreds of incidents and
complaints involving natural gas and oil drilling buried in the DEC's
hazardous spills data base.
Yancey Roy, a spokesman for the state DEC, said this week the agency
had no comment on the Cornell law team's assessment as it processes all
public responses to the plan. The final plan is required to address the
comments.
During a hearing with the state Assembly, DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis
said the agency "will certainly need additional staff in order to
timely process the applications" with a significant rise in permit
applications. In the absence of a staff increase, he added "we will
still do a careful and comprehensive job in permitting, but it will
take longer."
Katerina Barquet, a law student who worked on the project,
characterized the DEC's answer as a "generic" response that doesn't
address the issue. "How are they going to do a comprehensive job
without people in the field?" she said. "Where are they on site?"
Without more inspectors, Marcellus development "will rely on
self-compliance," said Porter, the adjunct professor at Cornell. "That
would lead to the occasional Dimock (Pa.) experience that would
discredit everybody," he added, referring to spills, water
contamination and violations that have plagued drilling operations by
Cabot Oil & Gas in Dimock, Pa.
In addition to critiquing the plan, the Cornell law team offered this
recommendation: Delegate oversight of water resources vulnerable to gas
drilling to the agencies most familiar with managing them: county water
and soil conservation districts. Of course, there is a catch. An
undetermined amount of funding and manpower also would be necessary,
and nobody has figured out who will pay for that.
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