(Post updated and clarified.)
The Department of Environmental Conservation acknowledged today that it will soon have to issue a revised set of hydrofracking proposals and open them to public comment.
A DEC spokeswoman confirmed yesterday that the agency would file for a 90-day extension on its proposed regulations for large-scale hydrofracking. But the agency confirmed today that it will, in fact, have to issue updated proposals in order to receive the extension, and those proposals will be subject to 30 days of comment.
“A 30-day public comment period is required,” agency spokeswoman Emily DeSantis said today. “It will begin when the revised draft regulations are released.”
It’s not exactly clear when those regulations will be released to the public, however. The deadline to file them with the Department of State appears to be tomorrow, according to the State Administrative Procedures Act (SAPA), though it may not require them to be made public as soon as they are filed. (Some attorneys dispute that notion, however.)
Others have interpreted the law differently, with some legal watchers believing they must be published in the state register before the deadline, and others believing the state may be able to file them after the deadline.
DeSantis said the new proposals “will be released according to the requirements of SAPA.”
Standard disclaimer: High-volume hydrofracking—the method of stimulating natural gas from tight shale formations—has been on hold in New York since the DEC first launched a review of the technique in 2008. Permits can’t be issued until that review is finalized.
7 Comments
Well, it’s official, by putting out the regs before even the “health review” is complete demonstrates that politics, not science reigns.
I have to agree with Jill Wiener—why even bother with publishing the new “comment period.” If the regulations are published before any real kind of health review has taken place, well, why not just say screw you to the rest of us, we’re going to do what the energy industry has paid us to do.
The proposed regulations, which were based on a flawed SGEIS draft (a fact now admitted by DEC since they have written an entire new section on health impacts) presumably have not been changed since a year ago when we saw them first. If the many other flaws in the SGEIS have also been corrected, then doesn’t the DEC need to actually rewrite the regs to incorporate the changes?
The flaws in the SGEIS in addition to the lack of a health risk assessment, also include a lack of rationale for setback requirements, no solution to the handling and trucking of flowback, a lack of penalties, no cumulative impact analysis except on water withdrawal, no prohibition for any chemicals no matter how dangerous, and many more. If these flaws in the SGEIS have not been properly addressed by DEC. then won’t the entire DEC process come to a halt when a couple of environmental groups supported by thousand in the public with grave concerns take the issue to court.
We need transparency in this process, and we need a good faith effort to deal with all the comments the public wrote a year ago.
What a raw deal we New Yorkers are getting from the folks that tell us the decisions on fracking will be made based on the science! What kind of science? Political science and any kind of science gas drilling money can buy. Now we know.
Putting out the draft regulations at the same time last year as the draft SGEIS didn’t make sense. The regulations are supposed to be designed to avoid or mitigate the impacts that are exposed in the environmental and health impact studies, if those impacts are not so severe that the activity is not able to be permitted at all. How can regulations properly address the impacts when the studies are still incomplete? What the DEC is doing defies both scientific principles and logic.
The details of these regulations should always be open to the public in order for intelligent comments to be made. Public health should be one of the main concerns regarding these regulations and the gas companies should be liable for penalties if regulations are not met.
It is irrational to issue regulations before the health review is completed The science of the hydrofracking process should be considered; setting regulations beforehand seems obviously politically-driven for the benefit of the gas companies.
Regulations that precede data on health impacts are not based on science and therefore they are invalid. Governor Cuomo should not approve of any regulations that are not based on peer-reviewed science.