The Delaware River Basin Commission announced yesterday that it will invite public comment on its proposed regulations for gas drilling in the Delaware River watershed at three meetings in February.
The draft regulations, which were released in December, disappointed many critics of gas drilling as well as the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which had hoped that the DRBC would prohibit fracking until a study of its impact could be done.
The regulations themselves, which you can read below, are long and difficult to parse. Helpfully, the DRBC has printed a short fact-sheet guide to them which outlines their main points, which are:
- a process for allowing gas companies to use watershed water sources in the course of drilling
- guidelines for well pad placement, which include minimum setbacks from bodies of water and mandatory monitoring of nearby groundwater
- a permitting process for disposing of wastewater created during the hydraulic fracturing process
- a streamlined DRBC approval process for certain kinds of fracking projects that cuts the wait time from six months to 30 days
- a requirement that gas companies offer "financial assurance" of $125,000 per gas well to cover the cost of "plugging, abandonment and restoration of natural gas wells and the remediation of any pollution from natural gas development activities"
Here's the info about the public comment meetings from the DRBC's website:
Three public hearings have been scheduled during the 90-day comment period to receive oral testimony on the proposed rulemaking.
The public hearings will be held 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at the following locations:
Feb. 22 – Honesdale High School Auditorium, 459 Terrace Street, Honesdale, Pa.
Feb. 22 – Liberty High School Auditorium, 125 Buckley Street, Liberty, N.Y.
Feb. 24 – Patriots Theater at the War Memorial, 1 Memorial Drive, Trenton, N.J.
Just one of the meetings will be held in New York, in the auditorium at Liberty High School, which can only hold 750 people. The DRBC expects that about 75 people will be allowed to testify at each meeting, and anyone who wants to do so must register in person starting an hour before the hearings begin. So if you want to speak, you'd better get there early.
Luckily, the DRBC is also accepting written comments about the proposed rules. You can mail your comments to Commission Secretary, DRBC, P.O. Box 7360, 25 State Police Drive, West Trenton, NJ 08628, or submit them in person at the hearings. The DRBC also supposedly has an online comment form, but today the link does not seem to be working.
To peruse the proposed regs in full, read on:
