By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BAY RIDGE — The recent announcement by a gas company that it will not drill for natural gas near the city’s watershed comes after more than a year of protests including objections from Brooklyn Assembly Members James Brennan and Janele Hyer-Spencer, as well as Community Board 10 in Bay Ridge.

Facing a barrage of concerns and complaints from groups and officials both here and upstate, Chesapeake Energy Corporation said last week it was withdrawing its controversial plan to drill for natural gas to include the city’s vast watershed that supplies water to nine million people here and elsewhere.

On the eve of two public hearings, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon announced that leases would not be sought in watershed regions, where protesters fear environmental contamination to the city’s unfiltered water supply. In official tests over many years, the city’s water quality rates higher than popular commercial bottled spring water. “Until there is an agreement with Chesapeake that has legal teeth or until the Department of Environmental Conservation protects the NYC watershed by regulation, it is still at risk,� warned the Catskill Mountaineer this week. “Don’t to be confused by clever PR efforts.� A state draft report issued at the end of September, it said, lacked sufficient safeguard regulations sought by city and upstate protesters.

The drilling technique of hydraulic fracturing of the huge rocky Marcellus Shale, which stretches for 575 miles between the Catskill Mountains and much of Pennsylvania into east Ohio, would release toxin substances into the watershed area, opponents claim. The drilling would extend two miles below the shale.

A costly filtration system would be required, critics added, should watershed area drilling be done. The price tag is estimated at $10 million, according to Environmental Committee Chair Greg Ahl of Community Board 10 serving Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights. The board rejected the drilling plan in a non-binding vote earlier this year and previewed a documentary being made about the issue.

Proposed legislation by Brennan calls for a two-year ban on drilling pending results of any environmental impact study. The Brooklyn assemblyman wrote Commissioner Alexander Grannis of the state Department of Environment Conservation expressing his concerns. Another letter-writing campaign is aimed at Gov. David Paterson.

Hyer-Spencer, who represents Bay Ridge and part of Staten Island, is a co-sponsor of Bill A.1322/8748, which would establish a ban on permits issued for drilling of wells and prohibit drilling within two miles of the city’s water supply infrastructure. “Any plan to allow such drilling in the watershed is not just environmentally dangerous, but is fiscally unsustainable,� said Hyer-Spencer.

Pre-Hearing Rally

On Oct. 1 Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer launched the city’s “Kill the Drill� campaign. Coalition supporters in Brooklyn include Brennan and Hyer-Spencer, State Sen. Daniel Squadron, Public Advocate-elect Bill de Blasio and Congressman Jerrold Nadler, according to the Catskill Mountaineer.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is conducting a series of five public hearings this month in the affected areas on its State Generic Environmental Impact Statement, to be released next year.

The city hearing is set for this Tuesday, Nov. 10 at 6:30 p.m., at Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan. It will be preceded by a “Kill the Drill� campaign rally and press conference outside the school.

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