The forest, the oldest preserve in New York, is quiet and pristine.
Environmental advocates worry the calm there soon will be shattered by high-volume hydraulic fracturing, as has happened in Pennsylvania.
They fear large cement drilling pads, the size of football fields, and huge pipelines will replace decades-old trees; heavy truck traffic will mar dirt roads and spew pollution into the air; and hunters, hikers and picnickers will be overtaken by speculators and well operators.
In the coming months, New York is expected to decide whether to allow oil and gas companies to use this new fracturing technology to tap enormous natural gas reserves lying beneath Upstate New York.
High-volume “fracking” involves shooting millions of gallons of water, chemicals and sand into wells to break up shale rock below and create microscopic pathways for natural gas to escape.
“We’re talking about very large drilling sites, which include parking for 50 to 100 trucks and massive hydraulic pumps that are so powerful they can drive three million gallons of water down a vertical well 6,000 feet ... to fracture rock 4,000 feet in every direction,” said Neil Woodworth, executive director of the http://www.adk.org/home-flash.aspx, a nonprofit group that promotes outdoor recreation and conservation. “This kind of highly concentrated industrial use is not compatible with the original mission of the state forest.”
Oil and gas drilling already occurs on some of New York’s forest and wildlife management land, primarily in Western New York. The drilling that’s happening now is conventional, vertical drilling or low-volume hydrofracking. The low-volume fracking in New York uses only about 80,000 to 100,000 gallons of water per injection. There are about 13,000 active wells on state land.
As of December 2008, New York had leased drilling rights on 52,669 acres of state forest and wildlife land to oil and gas companies hoping to capitalize on the natural gas resources trapped under the ground. Hewitt State Forest is one.
If Gov. David Paterson has his way, and high-volume hydrofracking is permitted, the number of leased public acres could skyrocket over the next few years.
Environmental advocates worry that speculation will open state green spaces up to environmental destruction and harm watersheds that provide drinking water to millions of New Yorkers.
The company that owns drilling rights on forests in Central New York recently was fined for a hydrochloric acid spill near one of its Pennsylvania wells. Last year, it agreed to pay a Geneva family damages after natural gas drilling polluted their drinking water.
Some of New York’s forests being leased sit in or near watersheds. Signs posted on roads leading into Hewitt warn drivers that they are entering a Skaneateles Lake watershed protection area. Skaneateles Lake provides drinking water to more than 200,000 Central New Yorkers.
Environmentalists also fear the state Department of Environmental Conservation won’t have enough staff to regulate drilling. The DEC has 19 people, including supervisors, to oversee the 13,000 drilling sites across the state.
“We have 19 people qualified to do well inspections, but that’s not to be confused with the number of people working on fracking issues,” DEC spokesman Yancey Roy said.
Inspectors must be present at a site when drilling begins. If drilling booms in coming years, Roy said, “and staffing becomes an issue because inspectors can’t get there, companies will have to wait.”
Advocates also question whether the DEC can fulfill what seem to be two conflicting roles: protecting the state’s natural resources and encouraging development of new energy sources, which generates income for the state.
“(DEC’s) Division of Mineral Resources is very oriented toward granting permits — that’s their function,” Woodworth said. “But who speaks for the groundwater, the migratory birds that might be killed by the impoundment lagoons?”
DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis maintains the agency can do both.
“My job is to make sure that activity doesn’t negatively impact the environment,” Grannis said. “The DEC ... is fully committed to ensuring that this drilling will only proceed in an environmentally responsible way.”
But with the state on the brink of bankruptcy, Paterson is promoting the land as an economic gold mine that could ease New York’s budget crisis.
“Natural gas extraction would create jobs, create wealth for Upstate landowners and increase state revenue from taxes and land-owner leases and royalties,” his administration wrote in the state’s 2009 Draft Energy Plan. “Development of state-owned lands could provide much needed revenue relief to the state and spur economic development and job creation in economically depressed regions of the state.”
The state stands to gain considerably from leasing public forest and wildlife land. Revenue from oil and gas leases on state lands totaled more than $2.1 million in 2008, which was a down year.
Profits come from one-time “bonus bids” companies pay for permission to drill and from 12.5 percent royalties companies pay on natural gas that is mined.
That money pays for state reforestation and conservation, according to the DEC, but it also can be swept into the state’s general fund or funneled to other state agencies. As the state struggles financially, Woodworth and others predict lease revenue will almost certainly go to the general fund.
In Central New York, the state has leased almost 8,000 acres of forest and wildlife land to private gas companies.
Chesapeake Energy Corp., the nation’s second-largest natural gas driller, holds most of those leases, with drilling rights on 7,791 acres in four forests in Cortland County: Hewitt, Tuller, Tuller Hill and James Kennedy state forests.
DEC officials said there is no drilling there. But the state received $3.9 million in bonuses when it sold the Cortland County leases to Chesapeake in 2006.
In Cayuga County, Columbia Natural Resources, a company that Chesapeake bought in 2005 for $2.2 billion cash, holds drilling rights on 62 acres of state Department of Transportation land off state Routes 326, 5 and 20. That land includes several active wells.
Chesapeake operates 13 drilling rigs in Pennsylvania and New York — including an exploratory well in the Cortland area. Chesapeake hopes to expand to 20 rigs by the end of 2010.
It’s a lucrative operation. Last year, Chesapeake CEO and co-founder Aubrey McClendon made $112.5 million in salary and bonuses, according to an Associated Press analysis.
But one with risks, too. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection announced last week it fined Chesapeake $15,557 for a 295-gallon hydrochloric acid spill at one of the company’s natural gas sites in Bradford County, just south of the New York border near Elmira. Hydrochloric acid is one of the almost 300 chemicals used in fracking. The spill contaminated soil, prompting 126 tons to be excavated, but did not affect groundwater, DEP officials said.
In January 2008, Chesapeake paid a Geneva family $423 in damages after hydrofracking polluted the family’s drinking water. A day after workers drilled on their property, the family noticed the water in their faucets and toilets had turned gray and cloudy and was sprinkled with sediment.
The family included a clause in their drilling lease that held Chesapeake accountable for any changes to their drinking water. The company agreed to pay for installation of a depth filter and rent on the unit for five months.
Chesapeake officials did not return several requests for comment. Neither did the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York, a lobbying group for oil and gas producers.
Environmental advocates worry that similar environmental degradation could occur on state forest and wildlife land if high-volume hydrofracking is allowed in New York. They point to the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania.
There, oil and gas companies have taken hold of the forest, sinking about 9,000 wells into the land. Huge swaths of forestland have been clear-cut and replaced with well pads the size of three football fields, drilling rigs that stretch hundreds of feet into the air and brine pits the size of small lakes. More than 2,000 miles of road have been carved into the forest to allow trucks to rumble in and out.
Last year alone, Pennsylvania signed new leases for 74,000 acres of state land, for a $166 million profit.
“New York has not experienced the kinds of problems cited in other states,” said Roy, the DEC spokesman.
Roy also pointed out that drilling on forest land has resulted in only 37 acres being disturbed by drilling and road or pipeline construction.
The state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation recently banned oil and gas leasing on state parkland. That department oversees 179 state parks in New York; the DEC controls the state’s forest and wildlife management areas.
“OPRHP has determined that the development of state-owned oil and gas resources located beneath state parkland is incompatible with the agency’s guiding principles ... and our commitment to preserving the state park system’s unique and irreplaceable natural assets,” Commissioner Carol Ash wrote.
--Delen Goldberg can be reached at email@example.com or 470-2274.
More on the topic
» Find the state's proposed rules, how to comment to regulators and background on drilling for natural gas on the In Depth blog.
» DCBureau.org: The Marcellus shale: New York is the natural gas industry’s new lab rat
» New York Times: Dark side of natural gas boom
» New York Times: At odds over land, money and gas