If President Barack Obama thought he was out of the environmentalist woods by delaying work on the Keystone XL pipeline, he was wrong.
Claiming success in the pipeline battle, environmental groups now have their next target: natural gas development in the Delaware River Basin. And again, Obama is the focus of their outrage.
“November 2011 is Obama’s moment of truth on extreme energy. It’s ours too,” Mark Ruffalo, actor and founder of Water Defense, wrote to supporters this week.
Ruffalo, a New York native and Academy Award nominee, is urging supporters to petition Obama to stand against the development “and fulfill his promise to free us from the tyranny of fossil fuels.”
A coalition of dozens of oil and gas companies, lobby groups and local businesses are pushing a federal interstate agency to lift the current moratorium on natural gas exploration in a basin that covers four states in the Northeast.
The Marcellus Shale Coalition, named after the shale formation that straddles the New York-Pennsylvania state line, wants the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to lift the development ban and pave the way for 300 wells to be drilled in the area until the project is reassessed after 18 months.
The DRBC, charged with maintaining the Delaware River’s quality and health, is scheduled to vote Monday on revised regulations that would lift the moratorium. The governors of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Delaware have four of the commission votes, and Col. Christopher Larsen, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ North Atlantic Division, has the fifth vote, representing the federal government.
Both sides believe that the states’ governors — Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, Andrew Cuomo of New York, Chris Christie of New Jersey and Jack Markell of Delaware — are split, leaving the swing vote to the federal government’s lone representative.
Corbett and Christie are Republicans. Cuomo and Markell are Democrats.
Fearing that natural gas development will poison the Delaware River in the hydraulic fracturing process — known more commonly as “fracking” — environmental activists are pressuring the president to instruct Larsen to oppose the development.
Fracking involves shooting a water, sand and lubricant mix down a pipe and out into the shale shelf, releasing natural gas that can be harvested by the well above ground.
Ruffalo is backed up by “Gasland” director Josh Fox, who was arrested in front of the White House in protest of the Keystone pipeline. He and other opponents fear that the fracking water will find its way into the Delaware River, spoiling water that almost 16 million people depend on.
“We won this round. … We can do the same to stop fracking in the Delaware River basin,” Fox wrote to followers. “Tell [the Army Corps of Engineers] you will hold President Obama accountable for the vote and make it clear that you know that it is his decision.”
Clean Water Action and Protecting Our Waters are two other environmental groups urging followers to call the White House in opposition of the development.
The White House has issued no public statements on the issue, but anti-fracking activists rounded up 500 signatures and delivered them to Obama for America’s Manhattan office in mid-October. The DRBC has received about 69,000 comments on the proposed regulations.
The Marcellus Shale Coalition insists that their operations are environmentally safe, and the Department of Energy so far generally agrees with them. In its most recent report on shale gas exploration, the department cites no scientific or government study showing that fracking directly and adversely affects water supplies, provided that the well is far enough away from groundwater.
The report instead provides recommendations for studying fracking’s environment impact, and it actually praises the coalition for involving community organizations in helping the public understand what natural gas development would mean for the public.
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection is less generous, writing in a report that “intensive natural gas well development in the watershed brings an increased level of risk to the water supply.” New York City’s water supply system is currently unfiltered.
The coalition cites data from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, released in October, which indicate that development has already supported 27,000 new jobs in 2011 and has been an economic boon to the state economy.
“We are united in the belief that [shale gas development] can continue to occur in a safe and environmentally-secure manner,” a bipartisan group of Pennsylvania lawmakers wrote when the report was released.
A spokesperson for Water Defense could not be reached for comment on how the Obama administration has responded to its petitions.
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