NY Landowners Face New Threat: Floodplain Boundaries
As many of you have heard via the national media, the Binghamton, NY (Broome County) area—where much of the drilling in New York State is likely to occur once drilling begins—was just hit with the worst flooding in its history, after the previous “worst ever” flooding occurred only five years ago, in 2006. This type of flooding is referred to as a “100-year flood” and it causes the government to re-draw floodplain maps to indicate where such areas are capable of extreme flooding.
Landowners who live in the Greater Binghamton area and who want to lease their land for shale gas drilling will want to closely watch where the boundaries are drawn because the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which regulates shale drilling, is looking to put land inside those floodplains off limits to drilling.
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When it comes to hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, one size does not fit all with respect to regulation, and moratoriums. Most people caught up in the frenzy of opposing fracking, especially in New York, may not realize that there are thousands of wells drilled in New York State, right now, that are fracked every year, and have been going back for the past 60 years. And with no cases of groundwater contamination.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issued a “final” draft version of proposed new drilling regulations yesterday (see link to full copy below) after incorporating new information it received from a private study about the industrialization affects of drilling on local communities. The new draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) weighs in at 1,537 pages—a behemoth. DEC Commissioner Joe Martens set up a 90-day public comment period to end December 12th, instead of the previously promised 60-day period.
Last week, New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli made a pitch for taxing the gas drilling industry in New York to create a pool of money that can be used to clean up accidents that may occur. As MDN pointed out (
Even though New York still has not adopted new drilling regulations, and likely won’t until late this year, and even though drilling will not begin until 2012 at the earliest, New York politicians are lining up to dip their hands into driller’s and landowners’ pockets. The latest example is New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli who has proposed a bill to the state legislature to create a driller-funded pool of money (i.e. a new tax on drillers) to cover the cost of any future accidents that may (or may not) happen because of drilling.
The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) leased 19,000 acres of state forestland to Chesapeake Energy and Fortuna Energy (now Talisman Energy) in 2006 to allow gas drilling. The deal provided state coffers with $9 million and the promise of 12.5 percent royalties on any gas produced. Those leases are due to expire Nov. 15 of this year, but Chesapeake has let the DEC know it believes the leases for its share (15,472 acres) should be extended, a legal phrase called force majeure, because of the moratorium that has been in place since 2008 on hydraulically fractured gas drilling. In a letter to the DEC, Chesapeake implied they will sue the state to extend the lease agreements if the state does not willingly agree to an extension.
Those opposed to Marcellus drilling in New York and Pennsylvania continue to use the court system in an attempt to either delay or outright ban drilling. The latest instance came just yesterday with a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York:
On May 31 of this year, NY Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to force the federal government “to commit to a full environmental review of proposed regulations that would allow natural gas drilling – including the potentially harmful "fracking" technique – in the Delaware River Basin” (
Once again New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens has delayed the start of Marcellus gas drilling—this time by at least an additional 30 days, maybe longer. The “nearly” final draft drilling regulations, called the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS), were released on July 8 (originally supposed to be released July 1 as ordered by Gov. Andrew Cuomo). At that time, Mr. Martens said there would be a 60-day public comment period that would begin in August. Then the DEC would review those comments, tweak the regulations, and issue the final regulations sometime late this year.