The New York City supply serves approximately 9 million people primarily through surface water retained from 19 reservoirs and 3 lakes. These sources of water, deliver approximately 1.1 billion gallons per day of water to the city. Recently the Marcellus Shale has been viewed as a source of natural gas. It covers about 95,000 square miles, which underlies the entire NYC watershed.
Hydrofracking, is the process of injecting water along with chemicals into the gas which results in the release of natural gas. This brings numerous risks to the NYC water supply. One of the impacts is the potential small scale surface spills and contamination incidents which will be inevitable with the magnitude of these projects. These spills will cause operational impacts, potential MCL violations and further undermine confidence in the ability to maintain current high water quality standards. One of the major risks is that the wastewater and gas resulting from operations will produce an industrial strength water stream with potential for adverse health and water quality effects. This problem occurs because of the complicated disposal options of the wastewater and gas. Other risks may include direct penetration by drilling, differential pressure, migration of gas and induced seismicity. The risk to the NYC water supply for our 9 million people must be looked at differently than to a private homeowner or small community because this is an enormous number of people that a bad mistake could impact. It has been proposed to ban drilling using high volume fracturing within the watershed and 4,0000 buffer. Along with that, we could reopen SEQRA if drilling using low volume hydraulic fracturing is proposed within the watershed. Finally, there are Delaware tunnels that have 2 mile exclusion zones and the Catskill and Delaware Aqueducts that can have 7 mile exclusion zones. The impact of natural gas hydrofracking has many chances to impact NYC’s population adversely and any decision made must be assessed incredibly because the possible negative impacts are unlimited.
Garcia, Kathryn. “Natural Gas Development and the NYC Water Supply.” American Academy of Environmental Engineers. AAEE, 14 May 2012. Web. 29 Nov. 2012. <http://aaee.net/>.
