GEC Research Proposal OUTLINE
Providing Access to Clean Water:
Impact of Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling on the New York City water supply.
Introduction:
Providing Access to Clean Water:
Impact of Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling on the New York City water supply.
Introduction:
Access to clean water is a basic human necessity that is often taken for granted, especially in developed nations such as the United States. However, securing and conserving water resources for domestic and agricultural use is a great challenge all over the world today, including in many parts of the United States itself. Some of the factors that may pose a threat to the provision of clean water include, but are not limited to, industrial and domestic contamination of water sources and government policy concerning water filtration processes.
With so many factors determining the quality and availability of municipal water supplies, every fresh water source in the U.S. is a potential battleground for the conflicting interests of its users, government, industry, and environmentalists. Nowhere is this standoff between public health, environmental and industrial interests so acute as in New York City, whose 9-million inhabitants consume roughly 1.3 billion gallons of water on a daily basis. 90% of this water comes from reservoirs in the five-county Catskill Mountain/Delaware River Region of New York State, a region which is also home to 72,000 people. The natural purity of the watershed is a point of great pride for city dwellers as New York City water requires very minimal chemical filtration to achieve potability. However, this natural purity of water is easily compromised by addition of industrial waste effluents and degradation of supporting ecosystems. The recent ongoing proposal for natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale is one such process that could result in degradation of water quality and also lead to negative economical impacts.
Our research is centered on investigating how natural gas drilling in the Marcellus shale would affect the provision of clean water to the residents of areas overlying the rock, particularly those of New York City. The Marcellus Shale is a layer of shale rock that spans from Tennessee, through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio and into the southern region of New York. The portion of this rock which lies in the Catskill watershed region is approximately 18,750 square miles and lies more than 1 mile underground. The main concerns arising from drilling in this region stems from the use of an industrial process known as hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’ to mine natural gas from the rock. How exactly does the process work? Large amounts of water are mixed with sand and chemicals, pumped into the shale under very high pressure, causing the rock to develop fractures. Natural gas then escapes through these fractures and is collected. The process affects water supply in two direct ways:
1. Immense volumes of water are required and
2. Discharge of chemical waste after the actual process has occurred is problematic.
Since the natural gas drilling project traverses many economic, political and public policy arenas, the water issue in New York City threatens to become even more complicated. To illustrate this point, consider this: a survey on the Shale done in November 2008 by Terry Engelder, a Pennsylvania State University Geosciences professor, approximates that the Shale may hold as much as 363 TCF of recoverable natural gas, an amount that could serve the US’s natural gas consumption needs for the next fourteen years. Thus, the overall large-scale benefits of the drilling are so lucrative that they easily shroud its negative end effects on water resources and other fronts of the environment.
We are interested to find out exactly how water would be purified should the Marcellus Shale drilling project be approved. Our hypotheses are
1. The increase in water contamination would lead to the need for further filtration.
2. Extra costs of filtration would consequently increase the cost of New York City water and
3. Low income families would suffer greatly as a result of this increase in cost. The challenge of providing clean accessible water to all lies in the final hypothesis.
A Place to Visit:
USGS New York Water Science Center
425 Jordan Road
Troy, NY 12180-8349
The USGS is an important source of information for this project and the Water Science Centre carries out research and monitoring of water bodies in New York and also provides real time data from 300 sites in the state. Water-quality is one area of focus which is a key aspect of this project.
A Person to Interview:
http://www.columbia.edu/~ula2/ - UpmanuLall, professor in dpt. of earth & environmental engineering.
We would ask for a scientific opinion and overview of the process and whether the data gathered thus far is relevant and balanced. We would also clarify any doubts we might have encountered by that point.
Academic Sources:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2009/3032/pdf/FS2009-3032.pdf- Brief overview of issue compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey.
http://www.cwconline.org/news/gasinfo.html- The Catskill Watershed Corporation, a Local Development Corporation is an organisation that was established “to protect the water resources of the New York City Watershed; to preserve and strengthen communities located in the region; and to increase awareness and understanding of the importance of the NYC Water System.”
( CWC Mission statement http://www.cwconline.org/about/ab_index.html) This article was compiled by the CWC as a public service to provide background information about natural gas drilling and the environmental aspects of the process and includes addition resources from existing drill regions.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/natural_gas_drilling/nycdep_comments_final_12-22-09.pdf - New York City Department of Environmental Protection hydraulic fracturing environmental impact statement.
Additional Materials and Sources :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0kmskvJFt0 - animation resource on what the drilling looks like
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/news/natural_gas_drilling.shtml -NYC Department of Environmental Protection Natural Gas drilling resources page.
http://geology.com/articles/marcellus-shale.shtml
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/natural_gas_drilling/nycdep_comments_final_12-22-09.pdf - New York City Department of Environmental Protection hydraulic fracturing environmental impact statement.
Additional Materials and Sources :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0kmskvJFt0 - animation resource on what the drilling looks like
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/news/natural_gas_drilling.shtml -NYC Department of Environmental Protection Natural Gas drilling resources page.
http://geology.com/articles/marcellus-shale.shtml
