County Board Stands Unified Against Hydrofracking

This week Westchester County's legislators made official their unanimous opposition to any drilling for natural gas via a controversial method known as hydraulic fracturing anywhere near the areas where the county and New York City gets its drinking water.

At their meeting this past Monday, the legislators passed a bill urging Gov. David Paterson and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to put an outright ban on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas anywhere in the Catskill region or Delaware River watershed, from which Westchester gets close to 90 percent of its drinking water.

"As chair of the Energy and Environment, our first concern is for the health and well being of Westchester's drinking water," said Peter Harckham (D-Katonah), the bill's sponsor. "That's why we called for an outright ban in the watershed."

The bill also called for a stop to all hydraulic fracturing in the state until a more thorough environmental review can be done.

Hydraulic fracturing, or "hydrofracking," is a method of collecting natural gas buried in the 400 million-year-old Marcellus shale layer about a mile beneath the earth's surface that spans a vast swath of the Northeastern U.S. The method involves drilling down and then horizontally, then pumping in millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals and solvents in order to push the gas toward wells on the earth's surface.

Environmentalists fear that with the massive amounts of toxic water involved, some could seep into aquifers, or the reservoirs from which Westchester and New York City get unfiltered drinking water.

In April the state DEC ruled that any company wishing to drill for natural gas via hydrofracking in the Catskills or Delaware River watershed would need to perform an Environmental Impact Statement for each individual well, rather than for the region as a whole. Because so much money and time is required for an Environmental Impact Statement, many believed that this move by the state was essentially a moratorium on hydrofracking in those areas.

Westchester's legislators didn't feel the DEC went far enough.

"Even if you're doing an Environmental Impact Statement for each well, it doesn't mean it won't be approved, it just means there's another step," Harckham said. "We feel it's too great a threat in the watershed."

When time came to vote at Monday's meeting, Michael Kaplowitz (D-Somers) said he couldn't see enough potential benefit to justify hydrofracking.

"It very directly affects Westchester residents, if there's an impairment we in Westchester are on a lot of levels going to be paying for the cost of cleaning up the mess," he said. "Potentially there's a huge financial downside with zero upside."

Chris Gilberti, a communications representative for the board of legislators, said that Westchester's representatives felt it was important to lend their voice to a growing chorus of communities across New York State that have asked for moratoriums on hydrofracking.

"We're hoping that by lending our voice to the other communities that have opposed it, the state will take a step back and say, 'Maybe we shouldn't do this at this time,'" she said.

Local governments in Tompkins, Cortland and Onondaga have also called for a halt to hydrofracking until more questions are answered. 

A spokesman for the DEC said there have been 58 applications to hydrofrack in New York State, none of them in the Catskill or Delaware River watershed region.

In April the Sierra Club's Lower Hudson Group hosted a presentation about the dangers of hydrofracking at the Greenburgh Nature Center. Harckham was in attendance.

Alfreda Williams (D-Greenburgh) said she worries that hydrofracking in the Catskills or Delaware River could "destroy the quality of life" for Westchester residents.

"They use millions of gallons of water to do the process and they mix the water with these chemicals that are carcinogenic and they have no way of purifying it," she said. "It's terrifying."

Editor's Note: This story was originally published on the Chappaqua-Mount Kisco Patch.