ProPublica: Energy & Environment

After White House Pressure, Agency Scales Back Whales Protection Rule

2008-08-26T12:10:00-05:00

by Paul Kiel

The Bush administration has not been shy in questioning the conclusions of government scientists. Years-long rulemaking processes have been shunted by White House questions and objections, reports and congressional testimony heavily edited, and in some cases troublesome scientists entirely removed from areas of responsibility. In one survey, nearly half of EPA scientists who responded complained of political interference.

Here is another episode. Yesterday, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued new proposed guidelines for the protection of North Atlantic right whales. According to the new rules, ships will have to slow to 10 nautical miles per hour within 23 miles of certain ports at certain times of year. While a significant measure to protect the whales, of which only about 300 remain, prior guidelines had extended the protected zone to about 34.5 miles from shore.

The reason for the restriction was pretty straightforward: fast moving ships had killed about 20 whales in the past 20 years, government scientists found (PDF). The whales, in fact, earned the name "right whales" because they were such an easy quarry for whalers.

For four years, government scientists studied right whale deaths in order to develop rules to protect them. But when they finally presented the White House with a proposed rule in 2007, they found the administration unimpressed. According (PDF) to correspondence produced by House oversight committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA), the vice president's office in particular had been a particularly harsh critic, complaining that scientists had no "hard data" to support the guidelines. Officials in the White House Council of Economic Advisors had apparently crunched their own numbers on right whale collisions, and their conclusions jibed with those reached by the shipping industry (PDF).

Agency scientists responded that their findings were clear and reliable. But with a nod to the shipping industry, the new rules propose a scaled back protection area. A spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency for the fisheries service, told the Washington Post that "time is money in shipping" and that the agency had sought to address "a concern about the increased cost to carriers" by reducing the speed zones.

There's no indication as yet whether the White House is satisfied with the compromise. The shipping industry is not, still objecting to the speed limit.

How Taxpayer Money Is Wrapped Up in Georgian War

2008-08-12T10:40:00-05:00

by Sharona Coutts

Russia's announcement this morning that it will cease its offensive in Georgia has created a potential lull in what was a rapidly escalating military and diplomatic crisis.

Whether the fighting really ends, one result of the conflict is clear: it has thrown a bright light on that region's importance to global oil supplies. A pipeline that runs through Georgia is the second largest in the world.

But a little-reported fact is that American tax dollars were used to help fund big oil projects in the region.

Georgia sits between the rich oil deposits of the Caspian Sea in the East, and the friendly shores of the Mediterranean in the West. Since 2006, a 1,100 mile pipeline has pumped that crude from Baku, in Azerbaijan, westwards across the conflict-torn continent to tanker ships waiting at the Turkish city of Ceyhan. The multi-billion-dollar Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is run by an international consortium, including American oil-giants Chevron and Conoco-Phillips.

The Daily Mail in the U.K. has reported that Russian planes have targeted the pipeline, and Georgia's president, Mikheil Saakashvili, told reporters at a conference call that the war is a Russian oil-grab to "control energy routes."

So, how is U.S. taxpayer money bound up in all of this?

It has to do with the role of the two government agencies, the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), that lend money to private companies doing business overseas.

These agencies exist to promote U.S. business abroad, which they do by giving loans and guarantees for projects that are too big or, in many cases, too risky for the tastes of private banks and financiers.

"We exist to take risks that the commercial markets either cannot or are not willing to make," said Phil Cogan, spokesman at the Ex-Im Bank. "That's the reason for export credit agencies for the most part. It's to support the exporters of the United States because those exporters wouldn't be able to make the sale unless there was a guarantee or direct lending."

In the case of this pipeline, the Ex-Im Bank gave a $160 million guarantee to a group of banks that wanted to lend money to the companies involved in the project. If the project fails or goes up in flames (which it could do, literally) Ex-Im will bail out the private banks, and taxpayers will be left holding the bag.

Same deal for OPIC, which gave the project $100 million in "political risk insurance." In other words, the companies apparently weighed the risk of just the sort of conflict the region is now facing, and then went to a government agency for insurance.

Critics see these guarantees as a form of corporate welfare.

"If we're talking about the oil and gas industry, there's absolutely no need for the federal government to be investing in any new projects," said Keith Ashdown from Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-profit that works to reduce wasteful government spending. "These guys are making money hand over fist, and they can be investing in their own new capital projects."

In the case of the BTC pipeline, activists and academics have been warning about the project's dangers for years, and arguing that taxpayers shouldn't incur the risk.

Ex-Im spokesman Cogan stresses that the government-funded bank usually brings in a net profit from the fees it charges for insuring risky projects. He also said that this loan is far from the biggest that Ex-Im has made.

Nor is the U.S the only country whose taxpayers helped make the deal happen. The biggest player in the project is British Petroleum, which owns just over 30 percent of the pipeline. The U.K.'s export credit agency, as well as the European development bank, also put money into the deal.

BP spokesman Robert Wine said despite the reports that the pipeline has been targeted by Russian planes, the "pipeline hasn't been affected by the conflict." He said that BP "continues to monitor the situation."

"The pipeline is a channel that runs through Georgia," he said. "We don't have business interests of any great note in Georgia, and clearly this is a matter for the governments of Georgia and Russia."

State Environmental Dept. a No-Show at Drilling Meeting

2008-08-07T14:20:00-05:00

by Abrahm Lustgarten

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation backed out of a community discussion of gas drilling in Oneonta, N.Y. last night. According to local news reports, about 450 people attended the meeting, including speakers from the region's water boards as well as geologists.

The Daily Star reported the DEC canceled its participation because Gov. David Paterson has ordered a supplemental environmental impact statement to assess how drilling will affect the area.

Proposals to drill for gas in the Marcellus Shale, which lies 7,000 to 9,000 feet below the surface in southern New York state, are raising concern because the drilling process uses potentially toxic chemicals and millions of gallons of water. New York City is especially worried about possible water contamination, because the city gets most of its drinking water from reservoirs above the Marcellus Shale.

Fractured Relations—New York City Sees Drilling as Threat to Its Water Supply

2008-08-06T08:30:00-05:00

by Abrahm Lustgarten

New York City officials have demanded a ban on natural gas drilling near upstate reservoirs because they fear the drilling could contaminate the city's drinking water.

They've asked the state Department of Environmental Protection to establish a one-mile protective perimeter around each of the city's six major Catskill reservoirs and connecting infrastructure -- a buffer that would put at least half a million acres off-limits to drilling. They also want to wrest more regulatory control from Albany.

New York is one of just four major cities in the United States with a special permit allowing its drinking water to go unfiltered, and that pristine water comes from a network of reservoirs and rivers in five upstate counties. If the special permit was revoked, the city would have to build a treatment facility that could cost nearly $10 billion, said Walter Mugden, a senior official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That's roughly what the state estimated it would earn from gas development over the next decade.

In a letter (PDF) from the city Department of Environmental Protection to state officials, obtained by ProPublica, commissioner Emily Lloyd said she was not satisfied with the state's assurances that the environment would be protected from drilling in the Marcellus Shale, a layer of rock that dives up to 9,000 feet below much of the Appalachian east, including south central New York state and the 2000-square-mile watershed.

The letter doesn't offer any specifics on how drilling might taint the city's water or explain the basis for the one-mile buffer, but it made clear that as guardians of New York's water, city officials view drilling as a serious threat to the tap water supply for nine million downstate residents. It could involve thousands of gas wells producing billions of gallons of toxic wastewater.

"If you are ranking areas of concern that need extremely careful protection [the New York watershed] would have to be at the top of anybody's list," Mugden said. "More than half the state...depends on that watershed on a daily basis."

Lloyd asked that a state, city and federal working group be formed to reassess regulations in the watershed and to recognize it "as a unique resource requiring special protection." She called for the city to be given a say in the state's permit review process, and for the public to be allowed to comment on each well's permit, something that is not guaranteed now.

The Marcellus Shale is among several large new gas reserves in the United States that have become economically viable in a time of record oil and gas prices. Terry Engelder, a geologist at Penn State University, believes it could meet all the nation's natural gas needs for two years. The Department of Environmental Conservation, which oversees exploration, has estimated that Marcellus development could add as much as a billion dollars a year to the state's anemic economy.

Still, the environmental consequences of developing Marcellus wells on a large scale could be severe. Getting the gas involves a process called hydrofracking, or shooting millions of gallons of water and drilling chemicals at explosive pressure deep underground to break up the rock, and drilling the Marcellus would require more water than most other types of drilling. The identity of the chemicals, which are sometimes toxic, is protected as a trade secret, making it difficult to assess how wastewater can be safely treated and discharged. Drilling in other states has resulted in more than a thousand wastewater spills that have affected drinking water.

An investigation last month by ProPublica and WNYC public radio found that New York state had not adequately assessed the environmental risks and did not have a complete regulatory structure in place to determine where the immense amounts of water used would come from, or how it would be disposed of after it was used. It found that New York state did not know the chemical contents of the drilling fluids that industry would use, and was not aware of the level of contamination in other states.

Last week Gov. David Paterson ordered the DEC to update the 16-year-old environmental impact assessment it was relying on and pledged to require the industry to disclose the chemicals it uses. But he did not promise to stop drilling from going forward in the meantime.

Lee Fuller, vice president of government relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said the city's worries are unfounded because the wastewater will be managed and is regulated under state law. "I don't see this hypothetical risk to New York's drinking water as realistic at all," he said.

The city was not brought into the gas drilling conversation until mid-July, even though state officials had been working on the issue for seven months. The city sent a letter to state officials raising concerns about a new well-spacing bill that was before the governor, and Lloyd requested special consideration for the watershed a few days later.

Both the state and the city have tried to keep their negotiations private. A DEC spokesman said the agency works closely with the city, and the city responded in kind.

"DEC has given us every assurance we have asked for," Lloyd said through a spokesperson Friday, "...that the environmental review will be very stringent, that we will be at the table throughout the process, and that protecting water quality is their first priority as well as ours."

James Gennaro, a New York City councilman and chairman of the city's committee for environmental protection, wants the city to go further. He is calling for a complete moratorium on drilling anywhere in the Catskill watershed, which provides 90 percent of New York City's water and also makes up the heart of the Marcellus deposit. He said he will ask the EPA to conduct its own study of the threat drilling poses to the city's drinking water.

"I just don't think it's a proper activity for an area which is the city of New York's most precious capital asset," he said. "I think it poses a risk. I think they are going to say quite candidly that it is a problem. Let the federal government go on record."

The face-off pits the city's interests against the broader economic needs of the state, so its solution may not be simple, according to Eric Goldstein, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Gas leases are selling for as much as $3,000 an acre in parts of the state with stagnant economies.

The historic upstate-downstate friction can be attributed at least in part to the controversy over New York City's acquisition of the watershed lands in the early 1900s, Goldstein said. "Those were pure eminent domain takings; thousands of residents were moved, towns were relocated, cemeteries dug up and bodies reinterred. Obviously some tensions have remained."

Goldstein said New York City may have the law on its side, because public health code gives it the power to set and enforce any pollution controls in the watershed. But unilateral action would be a last resort. Instead, the city is more likely to search for a cooperative solution that leaves the door ajar for upstate economic growth while still saving the city’s water.

"You could say that from a legal standpoint they have authority," Goldstein said. "How and whether they might choose to use it is another question."

Rep.’s Wacky Wildebeest Hunt Foiled

2008-07-24T16:57:00-05:00

by Jamie Hodari

Former presidential candidate Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) has never been shy about his passion for hunting. But he found himself the object of some friendly ribbing in yesterday’s Washington Post for his most recent hunting plan: Hunter recently wrote the U.S. Embassy in Chad saying he planned to take a hunting safari there -- part of an effort, he explained, to save refugees.

Hunter wrote that he would begin his trip to Chad with an expedition to hunt wildebeest, after which he would cure the meat and distribute it to hungry Sudanese refugees living in Chad. The State Department issued a tepid response to Hunter’s request. Among the problems it pointed out: "Wildebeest are not present in Chad."

Despite the State Department’s assurance that he would be more than welcome to assist in a more typically scheduled aid distribution, Hunter scrapped his trip and is now looking into Kenya or Tanzania, which have fewer Sudanese refugees than Chad, but far more wildebeest.

Hunter has something of a history of creative hunting projects.

Hunter represents California’s 52nd District, which covers part of San Diego County and lies inland from Channel Islands National Park. The park is crisscrossed with endemic wildlife, such as the endangered island fox. But those species have been under threat for years from a non-native deer population, which the National Park Service had planned to eradicate until 2005, when Duncan Hunter stepped in.

Hunter, who was chairman of the House Armed Services Committee at the time, included language in the 2006 defense bill that would have allowed the Channel Island’s second largest island, Santa Rosa, to be used as a private game preserve available to disabled veterans and guests of the Pentagon.

When criticism of the policy arose, Hunter’s spokesman told the Los Angeles Times, "This is disappointing news, when considering this proposal was solely intended to benefit our nation's wounded and disabled service personnel." The problem was interested disabled vets, much like the wildebeest, were nowhere to be found. Paralyzed Veterans of America declared the plan "not viable" after visiting Santa Rosa and concluding the mountainous terrain wouldn’t work for hunters in wheelchairs.

Hunter’s Santa Rosa plan, which his press secretary, Joe Kasper, told us "reflected Congressman Hunter’s passion for the outdoors and his interest in supporting our wounded vets," was finally reversed in the 2008 Defense Authorization bill, ending veterans' chances to have what Kasper called "the experience of a lifetime."

As for Hunter’s short-circuited Chadian adventure, Kasper said, "Hunting game that could be distributed to refugees -- if allowed -- would be one part of the privately funded trip." He added, "At this point, nothing has been finalized."

Despite New York’s Order for Environmental Review, Gas Drilling May Proceed

2008-07-24T11:02:00-05:00

by Abrahm Lustgarten

Gov. David Paterson’s executive order for an updated environmental review for gas drilling in New York could take 12 months to complete, but that doesn’t mean drilling in the Marcellus Shale can’t begin in the meantime.

“The announcement of the preparation of a supplemental environmental impact statement does not necessarily freeze drilling,” said Judith Enck, the deputy secretary of the environment in the governor's office. “He understands that there are potential economic benefits to upstate New York in terms of job creation and expansion of the tax base. He also thinks that if drilling goes forward he wants it to happen in the most protective way possible.”

The bill the governor signed into law on Wednesday did not rule on whether or not drilling can proceed -- drilling is already allowed in New York -- but is more akin to a zoning regulation. It simplifies the drilling permit application process by standardizing the above-ground spacing between wells and their below ground horizontal reach, rather than leaving those decisions to be made on a case-by-case basis.

A joint investigation by ProPublica and WNYC radio this week into regulatory and environmental oversight of the gas industry found the state was relying on a 16-year-old environmental review and had not addressed the gathering of large quantities of water used for drilling, or the treatment of that water as toxic waste.

When he signed the bill, the governor ordered an update to the 1992 generic environmental impact statement, which he recognized did not address the horizontal drilling technology that will be used to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation that lies 7,000 to 9,000 feet below the southern part of New York state. That review, Enck told ProPublica, will begin with a series of public meetings and information gathering across the state’s southern tier in spring 2009, and result in a new supplemental draft by the following fall.

That process will start the clock ticking for the drilling industry, which has made large investments in land leases that expire in about five years.

“Environmental impact statements tend to take some amount of time, probably longer than the industry is going to be willing to wait for them,” said Tom West, president of The West Firm, a lobbying group that represents most of the major gas companies interested in the Marcellus Shale. West says the industry supports a comprehensive environmental review, but needs to move through its exploration phase towards real production at the same time. “What would be nice if it works out is some of these exploration wells get drilled in the meantime, while the GEIS is being assembled.”

One possible kink is that a fresh environmental review could call into question the very spacing bill the governor signed this week, and that leaves environmental groups skeptical of the fine line the state is walking.

“It’s a bit of a piecemeal approach, and it’s too bad because this is a comprehensive problem,” said Wes Gillingham, program director for Catskill Mountainkeeper, an environmental group that opposes drilling. Gillingham says the governor’s comments still don’t directly address what drilling could mean for the New York City watershed and the city’s drinking water. “Approving this bill...is creating more questions.”

Along with the environmental review, Gov. Paterson called for an assessment of staffing and enforcement capabilities at the state Department of Environmental Conservation, a reexamination of jurisdiction over water withdrawals and an evaluation of the overall existing environmental regulatory structure as it relates to drilling.

Asked whether the governor’s requests will translate into action, Enck was firm.

“I think when the governor asks you to do something it’s never informal,” she said.

Governor Signs Drilling Bill But Orders Environmental Update

2008-07-23T17:57:01-05:00

by Abrahm Lustgarten

Governor David Paterson signed a bill this afternoon to streamline the application process for drilling in New York’s Marcellus Shale, but he also ordered the state to update its 1992 generic environmental impact statement in the process.

The directive comes one day after the release of a joint investigation by ProPublica and WNYC radio into the state’s regulatory and environmental oversight of the gas industry. The report found that the state was relying on a 16-year-old environmental review and had not addressed the large quantities of water needed for the drilling, or the treatment of that water as toxic waste.

In a release that accompanied the announcement of the bill’s signing, Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Pete Grannis promised that “DEC will be vigilant in ensuring environmental safeguards. Water protection will be a top priority.”

“The update will examine potential impacts from new horizontal drilling techniques, including potential impacts to groundwater, surface water, wetlands, air quality, aesthetics, noise, traffic and community character, as well as cumulative impacts. The update will occur as part of a public process that ensures that concerns raised by residents who could be affected by drilling activities are heard and considered.

“In addition, DEC is reviewing a variety of other areas, including staff resources, existing regulations, jurisdiction over water withdrawals, permit application fees and procedures, and legal and regulatory compliance, that could be implicated by increased drilling activity.”

There’s more to say about what this all really means, so check back for developments tomorrow.

New York State Tightens Drilling Controls

2008-07-22T22:27:00-05:00

by Abrahm Lustgarten

New York state will require drilling companies to disclose all chemicals used to exploit natural gas deposits in upstate New York. That’s according to Judith Enck, deputy secretary for the environment for Gov. David Paterson.

Enck made the announcement in an exclusive interview with WNYC radio, just hours after the release of ProPublica’s and WNYC’s joint investigation into the state’s regulatory and environmental oversight of the gas industry in New York.

The investigation found that state environment officials were slow to learn that toxic chemicals were part of the gas drilling process and that those chemicals are typically held as competitive trade secrets by industry. It also found that the state doesn’t have a comprehensive plan for supplying the vast quantities of water needed for drilling or treating that water once it is mixed with the chemicals.

Today’s announcement by Enck marks a departure for state officials. When questioned over the past month by WNYC and ProPublica, officials at the state Department of Environmental Conservation repeatedly declined to say whether they would require disclosure of the chemicals involved in the drilling.

It remains unclear how the drilling companies would deal with the millions of gallons of waste water the wells would produce. Treatment plants would need to know the identities of any contaminants in order to remove them fully from water before discharging it back into the state’s rivers.

Breaking: NY Gov’s Office Questioned About Our Gas Story

2008-07-22T16:32:00-05:00

by Eric Umansky

For those interested: This evening, WNYC is planning to broadcast an interview with New York's deputy secretary for the environment, Judith Enck, regarding the ProPublica/WNYC investigation into little-examined plans to drill for natural gas near New York's watershed. We hear she's going to have quite interesting things to say. You can look for it here.

New York’s Gas Rush Poses Environmental Threat

2008-07-22T14:42:01-05:00

by Abrahm Lustgarten

On May 29 New York state's top environmental officials assured state lawmakers that plans to drill for natural gas near the watershed that supplies New York City's drinking water posed little danger.

A survey of other states had found "not one instance of drinking water contamination" from the water-intensive, horizontal drilling that would take place across New York's southern tier, the officials told lawmakers in Albany.

Reassured, the legislature quickly approved a bill to speed up the permitting process for a huge influx of wells that could bring the state upwards of $1 billion in annual revenue. Gov. David Paterson has until Wednesday to decide whether he will sign the bill, and the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, says drilling permits could be approved in as little as 12 weeks.

But a joint investigation by ProPublica and New York City public radio station WNYC found that this type of drilling has caused significant environmental harm in other states and could affect the watershed that supplies New York City's drinking water.

In New Mexico, oil and gas drilling that uses waste pits comparable to those planned for New York has already caused toxic chemicals to leach into the water table at some 800 sites. Colorado has reported more than 300 spills affecting its ground water.

DEC officials told ProPublica and WNYC they were not aware of those incidents, even though some of the information could have been found through a rudimentary Internet search. The officials couldn't say for sure how New York would dispose of the millions of gallons of hazardous fluids that are byproducts of this type of drilling, and they learned only recently that the new drilling techniques would pump trace amounts of toxic chemicals into the ground. Four days after one interview, the DEC drafted a letter to the drilling companies, asking for detailed information about the type and amount of chemicals they will use.

With energy prices at record highs -- natural gas prices are twice what they were in January -- difficult-to-reach deposits of oil and gas in the United States are becoming commercially viable. At least nine companies have been locking up leases in New York, Pennsylvania and Appalachian states for drilling rights to the Marcellus Shale, a gas-rich rock layer that dives 7,000 to 9,000 feet beneath the earth's surface. Some geologists predict it could meet the entire nation's natural gas needs for more than two years.

But the extraction of natural resources from sensitive areas creates new problems for individual states, which bear the primary responsibility for protecting their environments. Some have created, or are in the process of creating, new regulations. Others, like New York, are just coming to grips with the potential impact of the drilling boom that may be headed their way.

New York's existing laws have served it well for the most part. Since 1963 the state has permitted more than 13,000 gas wells with few problems.

"When we say we are going to protect the environment, you don't have to trust us, you don't have to believe us," said Val Washington, deputy commissioner of remediation and materials management. "But look at our track record. I think it's pretty good."

However, the Marcellus development will be far more complicated than any previous drilling operations in the state. It will involve deeper, horizontal wells, possibly thousands of them. Each could suck up, and later spit out between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water -- hundreds of times the amount used by a conventional well. That would place a significant burden on New York's watersheds, including those that feed New York City's reservoirs and farmland in Chemung, Tioga, Broome, Delaware and Sullivan Counties.

Some of the regional DEC offices that would oversee the Marcellus wells have no experience with gas drilling at all. Yet New York officials said they see little reason to update their generic 1992 environmental impact statement, which was drafted long before this form of drilling, called horizontal hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking, was feasible on such a large scale.

"There is a little bit of learning curve...and that is where the concern falls," said William Kappel, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Ithaca, N.Y. "The tremendous amounts of water used for these processes -- where are you going to get it and what are you going to do with that?"

DEC officials could not answer those questions. They also acknowledge that they don't track the process drillers use to dispose of "produced water," as the gas and oil industry refers to its waste.

The DEC says the issue of drilling in the Marcellus has come on fast. "It wasn't until last fall that we were really hit with the realization of what was happening," said Washington. "We heard about the leases down on the southern frontier, and it's been fairly recent, so we have our own work to do."

Understanding the Geology

The gas in the Marcellus is held in tiny pockets, like bubbles in a brick of Swiss cheese. To extract it, a mixture of water, sand and chemicals is shot into the earth with such explosive force that it fractures the rock, releasing the bubbles to the surface. Along with the gas comes most of the water that was shot down the well. But by the time the water re-surfaces, it is also laden with natural toxics from the shale layer below -- hydrocarbons, cancer-causing compounds including Benzene, Toluene, Xylene, and even radioactivity from uranium ore.

Waste water from the Marcellus formation may turn out to be slightly cleaner than that from other formations, early trials indicate, because it contains fewer of the naturally occurring toxins. But the U.S. Department of Energy lists produced water from gas drilling as among the most toxic of any oil industry byproduct, and when the water returns to the surface, it must be dealt with as toxic industrial waste. According to a 2004 report from Argonne National Laboratory prepared for the energy department, "Studies indicate that produced waters discharged from gas... platforms are about 10x more toxic than the produced waters discharged from oil platforms."

In most states the tainted water produced by gas drilling is injected back into the ground in areas where solid rock layers keep it isolated from people or their drinking water. But the geology in New York and Pennsylvania is different, and the water will be discharged into an ecosystem where it might wind up coming out of New York City's taps.

DEC's current regulations require only that produced waste be treated before being discharged back into rivers. Agency officials said the water would be shipped to Pennsylvania and treated in specialized plants there. But an executive for three of the Pennsylvania plants told ProPublica and WNYC that New York officials hadn't talked to him about the Marcellus wells. He said his plants don't have the capacity to accept wastewater from New York.

"Don't bet on it," said Paul Hart, president of Hart Resource Technologies, which owns and operates three of the region's five facilities, and whose phone number was given to ProPublica by New York DEC. Hart said his company can't even build plants fast enough to handle Pennsylvania's drilling expansion.

An executive with another plant said DEC had talked to him about taking some of the waste water, but he too had serious concerns about how New York will deal with a huge quantity of waste.

Treating the Water

The challenges New York faces in controlling drilling's effect on its water are illustrated by what is happening at Tamarac Swamp, a state-protected ecological area.

The swamp sits on a quiet rural road brimming with oaks and maples, outside Oxford, N.Y., about a 45-minute drive from Binghamton. Last year, Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy, the nation's third largest gas producer, approached the sprawling wetland's owners with an offer to lease drilling rights for $75 an acre, a bargain compared to today's asking prices of $2,500.

The Zunno family declined Chesapeake's offer, intending to preserve the wetland instead. But last month the family spotted a tanker truck from another drilling company. Its long septic hose was draped over the side of the public roadway, draining water from the Zunno's culvert. Lori Zunno said a well had been built on a neighbor's land and its operator had sent contractors in search of water for the drilling.

"We can't even build within 100 feet of [the swamp] so I don't understand why they can take septic trucks and pump it out," Zunno said.

Zunno filed a complaint with the DEC, but she said no one seemed to know who was responsible for protecting her land, or what, if anything, the tanker company had done wrong. "They don't even know their own rules -- what's regulated and what's not," she said. "There was such a lack of knowledge on their part about what could be done. There is no clear cut 'you cannot take water from this spot.’'"

It turns out that the withdrawals from the Zunnos' property should be regulated by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission. But Zunno didn't know that. And neither did three DEC officials, who didn't mention the Susquehanna commission before they declined to comment on the Zunnos' complaint.

The Susquehanna commission and the neighboring Delaware River Basin Commission both require permits for regular or large water withdrawals, but New York does not regulate surface water extraction in other parts of the state. Anyone can take water from, say, the Hudson River, according to DEC's regional captain for law enforcement in the Zunnos' part of the state. When it comes to smaller water resources such as the Tamarac swamp, state law says only that wetlands cannot be drained.

Scientists and local land owners fear thousands of small water sources such as the Tamarac will be tapped to support the drilling industry, legally or illegally. The concern is that lots of small withdrawals will have a large impact.

"It's not clear to me that there is any group who is looking at the overall impact of withdrawing the amount of water that might be required for the hydrofracking. Who is looking at the broader picture?" said Susan Riha, director of the New York State Water Resources Institute, a federally funded study group at Cornell University.

Riha is especially concerned about the limitations of the DEC's Environmental Assessment Form, a crucial environmental impact document that drilling companies must file to get a permit. It doesn't ask where drillers plan to get their water and only asks for a vague estimate of how much they plan to use.

"Looking at that short form, I was shocked," Riha said. "It seems like we would have some procedures in place to put some pressure on the gas drilling operators to show that they are taking all possible steps to mitigate environmental impacts."

DEC officials acknowledged the gaps. "You're getting into the concept of cumulative impacts," said James Tierney, assistant commission for the division of water. "One water withdrawal may not have an impact, but 50 would have a huge impact. We're trying to figure it out."

This issue alone, says Riha, is reason enough under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, which mandates impact evaluations, to order a supplement to the 1992 environmental impact statement the DEC is still using.

Scientists are also concerned about chemicals added to the water to prevent corrosion in the drill bits, lubricate the drilling and keep the drilling mud, as the mixture is called, at the right consistency to coax out gas.

As recently as last month, Bradley Field, the DEC's director of the division of oil and minerals -- the agency responsible for overseeing resource extraction in the state -- appeared unaware of these additives. At a meeting with conservation advocates and state legislators he said drilling fluids contained nothing more than water and sand, according to Roger Downs, a conservation associate with the Sierra Club's Atlantic Chapter.

DEC has since adjusted its stance.

"They add chemicals, we know they do that," said Tierney, the water division official, in a meeting July 7. "We don't know exactly what they are."

In part that's because the industry views its chemical recipes as trade secrets, akin to the formula for Coke or Pepsi, and federal laws exempt the oil and gas industry from disclosing those recipes to the public. For the most part, states have learned about the chemicals by analyzing waste pits and the contaminated ground water around them.

Tracking Down the Chemicals

In 2004 Theo Colborn, a respected scientist who specializes in the health effects of low-dose chemical exposure and opposes gas drilling, began investigating the makeup of drilling fluids. She was spurred by the story of a Colorado resident who suspected her cancer was tied to water contamination from a nearby gas well.

To figure out what was in the water, Colborn collected shipping manifests that trucks must carry when they haul hazardous materials for oil and gas servicing companies. When an accident occurred -- a well spill in Colorado, or an explosion at a drilling site in Wyoming -- she took water and soil samples and tested them for contaminants.

Colborn's list eventually grew to nearly 200 chemicals, from suspected cancer-causing compounds like Benzene to a compound called 2-BE, which she told Congress causes adrenal tumors and other human health problems.

Her findings are supported by studies in New Mexico, Wyoming and Texas. Tests done by the New Mexico Office of Oil Conservation on mud and water from two gas drilling pits found Benzene, Toluene, Naphthalene and other substances.

In the Barnett Shale in Texas -- the formation geologists consider most similar to the Marcellus Shale -- the state has overseen the cleanup of radioactive material dredged up at hundreds of gas sites.

In Wyoming, where natural gas development has occurred on a large scale, the Environmental Protection Agency recently raised flags about one of the state's biggest gas fields, the Pinedale anticline, where a large drinking water aquifer appears to have been contaminated. In a letter circulated to drillers there this summer, the EPA wrote that it found Benzene and other compounds in more than a third of groundwater samples tested. "Such impacts are environmentally unsatisfactory," the letter said.

Val Washington, the New York DEC official, insisted New York can handle such problems.

"This is not New Mexico, this is not Colorado, this is New York," said Washington. "Out of 13,000 wells that we have permitted, we have not, for example, had a single ground water problem with any of them."

In conversations with ProPublica, DEC officials repeatedly downplayed the importance of the chemical additives. They make up just a tiny fraction of a percent of the fluids, Field said, because 99.4 percent is water and sand. But the remaining six-tenths of one percent of two million gallons of drilling water still equals 10,000 gallons of toxic chemicals -- and that's just for one well.

When pressed on whether New York would require the names of those chemicals as a prerequisite for approving an application in the Marcellus, Field said, "I don't know. We'd have to take a look. I can't say for sure right now."

Asked why he might not require the names, he replied, "Because it would be a departure from how we typically do this. I haven't really come to terms with that just yet."

Hart, the Pennsylvania treatment plant executive, said the last time he talked with a DEC representative, the caller, whose name he couldn't remember, displayed a general lack of understanding of water issues and didn't have a clear grasp of waste water disposal alternatives.

"He did not understand the variations of the different chemicals and the potential for contamination," Hart said. "Now with the Marcellus they are just completely unprepared for it. What I really think they are waiting for is the industry to make recommendations. I don't think they are going to be proactive."

DEC's recent letter drafted to the gas industry asked for exhaustive data and information that closely adhered in both substance and actual language to questions posed by ProPublica and WNYC. It gave the companies four and a half weeks to comply with the request. But it did not make compliance a condition for drilling.

For now, DEC's officials are asking their critics to have faith.

"If there is any doubt in anybody's mind that we are going to proceed with these applications without full protection and consideration for the environment, they are just wrong," Washington said. "It may be that the applicants down the line are going to have to wait a long time for their permits. There are some things to sort out here."

Jonathan Sidhu and Allison Battey contributed to this report.