Basin commission may hold gas drilling key

HAWLEY — The Delaware River Basin Commission has scheduled a public hearing at the PPL Environmental Center on Wednesday, Sept. 23, to take testimony on its proposed revisions to a water withdrawal permit application by Chesapeake Appalachia, LLC. a Marcellus shale gas driller. Huge volumes of water are required in the shale “fracking” process, to release what some experts say is one of world’s largest untapped reserves of natural gas. Commission staff has recommended approval of a one million gallon-per-day permit, from the West Branch of the Delaware. The site is in Buckingham Township in Wayne County. The 14-page docket is online at www.state.nj.us/drbc/dockets/D-2009-020-1.pdf . Its recommendations deal extensively with surface withdrawals, stream impacts, metering of withdrawals, and disposal of waste water (to be trucked to treatment plants outside the basin in PA and West Virginia) after use in the fracking process used to force out gas reserves from the shale. There will be no withdrawal fee charged against the $250,000 project by the commission as it is located upstream of Montague, N.J. But residents’ most voiced concerns have been about leakage of unidentified fracking chemical compounds from drilling bore holes, which could migrate into ground water reserves for the region’s drinking water - provided mainly by private wells. Only one paragraph (page12 paragraph W) deals with the ground water issue. If, after receiving complaints, the commission decides that drilling, “significantly affects or interferes with any domestic or other existing wells or surface water supplies,” the driller is liable for damages including repair, replacement or other “mitigation,” and the permit may be “modified or suspended.” The commission will decide on the permit at its Oct. 22 meeting.