Deputy Comptroller for Budget Marcia Van Wagner, representing New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr., provided testimony today at a City Council hearing of the Committee on Environmental Protection in support of Proposed Intro 1850-A, which calls on the New York State Legislature to support a ban on natural gas drilling within the upstate boundaries of the watershed of New York City’s drinking water supply.

Testimony of Deputy Comptroller for Budget Marcia Van Wagner before the New York City Council Committee on Environmental Protection on proposed Resolution Intro 1850-A, Prohibition of Drilling for Natural Gas in New York City’s Watershed:

Good Morning Chairman Gennaro and members of the Committee on Environmental Protection. I am Marcia Van Wagner, Deputy Comptroller for Budget, and I am here representing Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. at your hearing regarding the State Department of Environmental Conservation’s draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement and the proposed Council Resolution 1850 calling for a prohibition on gas drilling in our city’s watershed.

The New York City water system provides about 1.237 billion gallons per day of water to 9 million people. Approximately 90 percent of this water arrives from the Catskill and Delaware watersheds in upstate New York, which sit atop a section of the Marcellus Shale formation. The City, with the cooperation of the State and local communities, has already invested hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decades to protect the watersheds. In 2007, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency renewed the City’s Filtration Avoidance Determination based on the success that the City’s efforts had achieved. In the absence of the FAD, the City would need to construct a filtration plant that could cost from $6 billion to $10 billion dollars, which would in turn result in additional debt service expense of as much as $730 million. This increase in debt service alone would require a 27 percent increase to City water and sewer rates, even before adding the high cost of operating such a facility.

Comptroller Thompson is appalled that the Department of Environmental Conservation’s draft SGEIS would open access to the City’s watershed for hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas. Hydraulic fracturing is not regulated under the Clean Water Act, and exposing our water supply to the dangers of contamination posed by this technology is highly irresponsible.

Comptroller Thompson expressed his concerns about gas drilling in the watershed in 2008, in comments submitted in the DSGEIS scoping process.  Neither the final scope nor the newly proposed SGEIS were responsive to the fundamental concerns the Comptroller and others raised.  When the draft SGEIS was released several weeks ago, the Comptroller again stated his concerns and noted that he had written to the Governor and DEC emphasizing that the decision to drill so close to our water supply must include the strictest oversight to ensure that the millions of people who rely on the region’s water do not suffer ill effects.

It is not only drinking water that is at risk. In Pennsylvania, where “fracking” has been underway for some time, the State of Pennsylvania has had to issue alerts at least three times in the past year regarding the quality of water in rivers into which wastewater from natural gas drilling has leeched. The water has affected aquatic life and is reported to have damaged machinery, equipment, and household appliances. The existing water treatment plants in Pennsylvania have not been able to handle the volume and composition of the fracking fluid.  Similar and even more dire outcomes have been recorded at fracking sites around the country.

The things that we know about fracking – that it results in contaminated water supplies, invites inevitable and devastating chemical spills, and turns environmentally sensitive areas into intensive industrial sites–must be paired with the things that we do not know about fracking. These include the undisclosed chemical compounds used in the fracking process and the long-term consequences of fracturing underground formations and introducing chemicals into them. It is important to note that while the SGEIS would require some disclosure of additives used in the fracking process, it would not require drillers to disclose the specific chemicals used in those additives.

For these reasons, Comptroller Thompson wholeheartedly endorses Resolution 1850 and a ban on drilling for natural gas within the boundaries of the watershed of the New York City water supply.

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