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With fracking ban in works, Delaware River Basin battle could move to water

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With fracking ban in works, Delaware River Basin battle could move to water

After the Delaware River Basin Commission formally proposed banning fracking in its four-state watershed, environmental activists were not ready to take a victory lap Dec. 1, but they were encouraged after fighting for the ban for more than seven years.

Maya van Rossum, head of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, summed it up as "mixed emotions." "There's relief. It's a tremendous victory," she said in an interview. But hers and other environmental groups want a complete ban on the export of fresh water for fracking outside the basin and on the disposal of wastewater inside the basin. "We will be fighting hard," van Rossum said. "There's still a sense of worry."

The Sierra Club echoed the concerns about fracking water. "You do not protect the basin from fracking by allowing the dumping of fracking waste," Jeff Tittel, the group's New Jersey director, said in a statement. "This is a dirty water deal hidden behind a fracking ban. We would be better off keeping the moratorium in place in the entire basin [than] having a partial ban that actually allows the dumping of fracking waste."

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According to the commission, or DRBC, "high volume hydraulic fracturing poses significant, immediate and long-term risks" to the watershed and the river. "Controlling future pollution by prohibiting such activity in the basin is required" to protect both the quality of water in the basin and public health, said the proposed rule change, released late Nov. 30.

The DRBC also said it would "discourage" fresh water from being exported from the basin or imported as wastewater, presumably through strict permit reviews.

The DRBC is a federal compact that includes the governors of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware and one seat for the federal government.

David Spigelmyer, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group, said the ban would hurt landowners in the basin. "These proposed regulations amount to a taking and deny Pennsylvania citizens the right to develop their own property rights," Spigelmyer said in a statement. "It flies in the face of settled science and common sense environmental regulation."

Pennsylvania's largest gas-producing county, Susquehanna, is one county removed from the Delaware River, and drillers there take their water from the Susquehanna River Basin, which is governed by a separate river basin commission. Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., the county's top producer, with nearly 2 Bcf/d of gas flowing from Marcellus Shale wells, keeps all its water operations inside the county and takes no water from the Delaware, spokesman George Stark said.

Two Pennsylvania counties in the DRBC's jurisdiction, Wayne and Pike, are thought to be prospective to the Marcellus Shale. Early drilling activities started there, then stopped without result when the DRBC declared a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the basin in 2010.

Several counties in New York and in the river basin have Marcellus gas, but that state has banned fracking. Neither New Jersey nor Delaware are thought to have commercial quantities of shale gas.

The DRBC voted 3-1 in September to issue a proposed rule by Nov. 30, starting a rulemaking process that will last into 2018. The federal government voted against the move, and New Jersey abstained. When the time comes for another vote after the rulemaking process is finished, it is likely to be 4-1, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, will have left office to be replaced by a Democrat whose campaign promises included a fracking ban.

The DRBC has scheduled a set of public hearings on the rule in Waymart, Pa., and Philadelphia for Jan. 23 and 25. Van Rossum and Tittel want the commission to schedule more hearings to allow better access for communities along the 419-mile river. Van Rossum said there should be a hearing scheduled in each of the four states, as well as New York City, because New York's drinking water comes from aquifers in upstate New York that eventually form the headwaters of the river.