Delaware River Basin Commission’s Ban On Fracking Is Actually A Win For The Gas Industry

DRBC Decision Ignores Science On Climate Impacts of Methane On Water Resources

Commission Leaves Door Open For Future Imports & Exports Of Fracked Water

Climate activists are celebrating a major victory on today’s decision by the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to ban fracking in the Delaware River Basin (read the DRBC decision documents here).

I realize that the headline to this post is deeply counter-intuitive. How could a fracking ban help the gas industry? We explain how below.

Before we join the chorus, we like to read the decision documents and understand the rationale and implications of the DRBC decision. These kind of regulatory decisions are scientifically and legally complex and are often spun beyond recognition, particularly by green groups desperate for a win and a media that never gets into the weeds.

As I suspected, review of the documents reveals that it’s not all good. Let’s hope this bad stuff gets reported by the media, because it is highly significant:

1) DRBC’s decision completely IGNORED CLIMATE IMPACTS OF FRACKING AND NATURAL GAS.

While the impact of the DRBC decision geographically applies broadly to the entire basin, the scientific and legal rationale for the DRBC ban is very narrow in scope and limited to traditional water resource issues under long standing notions of DRBC jurisdiction.

It completely ignores the direct and “lifecycle” impacts of fracking, fossil infrastructure, and methane emissions on the climate emergency and even DRBC regulated water resources.

THIS IS SHAM AND A WIN FOR THE GAS INDUSTRY WHO IS DESPERATELY LOBBYING TO DENY THESE IMPACTS.

IT CONTRADICTS DRBC’s OWN SCIENCE ON CLIMATE IMPACTS ON WATER RESOURCES OF THE BASIN (over a decade old science).

THIS IS EXACTLY THE SHAM THAT ALLOWED DRBC TO APPROVE LNG EXPORT –

IN CONTRAST, NY DEC has built scientific and legal links between GHG emissions and regulated water resources impacts:

DRBC completely ignored that (despite a NY Commissioner). This is what has allowed NY DEC to deny permits for pipelines!

Failure to build that bridge allows the gas industry to continue to exploit loopholes in regulations and avoid regulation of climate impacts.

This also sets a bad precedent for upcoming NJ DEP Climate PACT regulations.  Just what the gas industry ordered!

(DRBC has jurisdiction over a tiny land mass with small gas reserves. But the science and law applies everywhere in the US. That’s why this is a win for the gas industry.)

2) The DRBC kept the door open for future water exports and fracked wastewater imports:

The DRBC punted on critical issues:

“The topics of water exportation and wastewater importation will be addressed as appropriate through one or more separate Commission actions.”

The Commission should have settled those two issues in its fracking ban. This means that the fight is not over, by any means.

3) The DRBC deregulated regional wastewater treatment plants:

The DRBC decision eliminates DRBC’s role in reviewing regional wastewater treatment plants:

“Remove the provision for review of regional wastewater treatment plans developed pursuant to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, because the basin states have effective programs for the transparent development and implementation of such plans”

I don’t understand how elimination of the DRBC’s role in reviewing regional wastewater treatment plants has anything to do with a fracking ban.

If anything, the Commission should beef up those reviews, because of the importation of fracking wastewater issue and because State’s have not adequately enforced the Clean Water Act’s NPDES permit program.

States have done an absolutely awful job in implementing the regional water quality planning provisions of the Clean Water Act. Because DRBC is a regional planning entity, they are well suited to address these State regional planning failures. It’s a very bad policy decision for DRBC to abdicate their regional role.

4) The DRBC recent LNG export decision may result in a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, despite the fracking ban

The DRBC recently approved a massive LNG export plant on the Delaware River. That plant will export huge quantities of Marcellus shale gas from Pennsylvania and adjacent states. There is a huge glut in gas and huge gas reserves.

LNG export also will increase the market price of fracked gas by creating export markets, and thereby stimulate even more investment and fracking and more methane and greenhouse gas emissions.

It is very likely that the GHG emissions from this vast expansion in fracking in the huge Marcellus shale formation will greatly exceed any GHG emissions reductions associated with the fracking ban in the tiny Delaware River watershed.

New York State already banned fracking and there is no economically recoverable gas in New Jersey.

I don’t have the data, but, compared to Marcellus shale formation gas reserves that will be exported by the LNG plant, there is not a lot of recoverable fracked gas in the rest of the DRBC basin.

So, with these serious shortcomings in mind, the climate activists should not be spiking the football.

[End Note – I do not mean to imply that this was not a huge win for activists (I’ve been working against fracking for well over a decade, I worked on southern Tier NY groundwater quality issue 35 years ago in graduate school at Cornell (my thesis topic), and attended the first DEC DEIS fracking hearings in October 2009). Nor do I claim that there’s are not solid regulatory decisions by DRBC, especially including these findings, which destroy the gas industry’s arguments that industry practices and regulation can adequately protect the environment: (DRBC findings)

• As the scientific and technical literature and the reports, studies, findings and conclusions of other government agencies reviewed by the Commission have documented, and as the more than a decade of experience with HVHF in regions outside the Delaware River Basin have evidenced, despite the dissemination of industry best practices and government regulation, HVHF and related activities have adversely impacted surface water and groundwater resources, including sources of drinking water, and have harmed aquatic life in some regions where these activities have been performed.