Most New Yorkers would be outraged at the idea of drinking water infused with dangerous chemicals, but a recent push to drill for natural gas beneath the city’s watersheds could lead to just that.
Every one of New York City’s watersheds lies within the boundary of the Marcellus Shale, a mineral formation hundreds of millions of years old, which experts postulate contains enough natural gas to provide the entire U.S. with anywhere from two to 14 years’ worth of energy. The danger in drilling for this gas is that numerous toxic chemicals, including hydrochloric acid, can be released into the area’s supply of drinking water.
At a sparsely attended lecture on Thursday night, Kate Sinding, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, outlined the public health risks associated with the potential development of and drilling for natural gas in the Catskill region of the Marcellus Shale.
“We do not, at the NRDC, take a no-drilling stance, but our concern is, will the drilling occur properly?” Sinding said.
Drilling requires hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” a process that involves forcing chemically contaminated water into rock fissures at high pressure in order to pump natural gasses to the earth’s surface. The problem is that chemically infused water can be discarded or run off into sources of drinking water.
Presently, New York City tap water is unfiltered and deemed fit for drinking by the Department of Environmental Protection. So why not just purify toxic water?
“If we needed to filter New York City drinking water, it would cost approximately $10 billion, and that’s an old estimate,” Sinding said. In addition to the cost of filtering the water, such a program would cost about $1 million a day to operate, she said.
Another problem is that the drilling companies are not required to disclose what chemicals comprise the fracking fluid.
Sinding recalled one incident in which a worker at a drilling site got fracking fluid on his clothing, and became sick. When he was brought to the hospital, the nurse treating him had a negative reaction to the chemicals and became almost lethally ill, but until the companies released the chemical components of the fluid, she could not be treated.
“This should not have to be the process anyone has to go to find out about what chemicals are used,” Sinding said.
Behind the scenes, environmental groups and drilling companies are bracing for a face-off in their opposite appeals to the government, with the former group requesting protection of the Catskill area and the latter pushing for permission to drill there.
“This is an issue that has really mobilized the environmental community as well as grassroots organizations across the state,” Sinding said.
But Thursday night’s turnout did not reflect this mobilization. Although organizers anticipated a crowd of 50-60 people, fewer than 15 showed up. “I guess we should have put up fliers,” Jason Patinkin, CC ’09, one of the coordinators of the lecture, and a member of EarthCo, said.
Members of the small crowd seemed to enjoy the talk, though. Mike Zamm , the director of education for the Council on the Environment in New York City , educates high school students around the city on environmental issues. He expressed shock at his own ignorance on the subject and was pleased to be briefed on the quietly ensuing battle over the future of the Catskill region.
After the lecture, Patinkin expressed his disappointment with the lack of students in attendance. He emphasized that, apart from the sanitation of the water they drink every day, Columbia students have another reason to care about drilling in the Catskill region. “I think it’s especially important because COOP [Columbia’s outdoor first-year orientation program] goes there,” Patinkin joked.
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