Petition to the Delaware River Basin Commission regarding the XTO water withdrawal application-XTO E

• by: Delaware Riverkeeper Network
• recipient:  XTO Energy wants to take 0.25 million gallons of water per day from Oquaga Creek, a trout stream that flows to the West Branch of the Delaware River in Broome and Delaware Counties to develop gas wells they plan to drill there.  The withdrawal site is on land owned by the Town of Sanford, which has given them access.  There is no permit required by NY State; the DRBC provides the only review of this withdrawal.
   
  Approval of this application is SO WRONG for many reasons including: wrong for the Oquaga Creek and the Delaware River; wrong because there is a moratorium on drilling in the Delaware River Watershed and on horizontal drilling/hydrofracking in New York; wrong because there has not been any comprehensive environmental review of immediate and cumulative impacts of gas development in the Delaware River Basin. For a copy of DRN%u2019s comment on the XTO application to the DRBC go to: http://delawareriverkeeper.org/resources/Comments/XTO%20Comment%205.11.11.pdf
   
  How can the DRBC approve this water withdrawal during its gas drilling moratorium, while its draft gas rules are pending and while New York has a hold on its generic permit for hydraulically fractured-horizontally drilled gas wells while it completes its environmental review?  How can they justify pushing this approval ahead when the rules could very well change how this application will be treated?  XTO has no permits for gas wells and has not justified its need for any water, much less 250,000 gallons of water every day from this cold water trout stream. What%u2019s the rush?
   
  A comprehensive environmental impact study that examines how natural gas development will impact the water resources and natural assets of the Delaware River Watershed must be done prior to any permits for gas related projects and before any gas regulations are adopted.  These studies, some of them now ongoing, need to inform regulations so that pollution can be prevented and degradation of the River and its Watershed avoided.
   
  New York State is supposed to protect Oquaga Creek, a trout stream, by applying %u201Cspecial requirements to sustain waters that support these valuable and sensitive fisheries resources under NYSDEC Protection of Waters regulations%u201D (DRBC Docket D-2010-022-1, XTO, p. 2). Where is this protection?  How will this withdrawal affect the trout, benthic life, and water quality of this richly diverse creek and of the downstream West Branch and main stem Delaware that need the cold fresh flows of the Oquaga to support stream life and water supplies downstream?  Neither New York nor the DRBC has analyzed this or supplied an answer.  This is flat out wrong.