There has been a battle in New York in the past six months to save New York City's water supply from dangerous hydraulic fracture natural gas drilling. Amid public uproar, the gas drilling company that owned drilling rights in New York City's watershed decided not to drill there, citing PR concerns.
This was great news except the New York's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) refused to put a legal ban on the practice in the watershed. That all changed on Friday. Kind of.
The new rules announced on Friday for the watershed will require drillers to get approval for drilling on a well by well basis. While in other parts of the state, presumably areas that are not as environmentally sensitive, there are general environmental guidelines that need to be followed, allowing for gas companies to more easily comply and drill.
These new rules will effectively make gas drilling in the watershed too costly and time consuming for companies to consider. However, it falls short of an actual ban that many New Yorkers were hoping for. There is more work to be done to make sure our water is safe. New York cannot afford to even have even the slightest chance of one of our most important natural resources to be contaminated.
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