Susquehanna River tops nation’s most endangered list

BY ELIZABETH SKRAPITS

Times-Shamrock Writer

Natural gas drilling is the Susquehanna River’s biggest threat, environmental groups say – and they’re emphasizing that belief by naming it the nation’s most endangered river.

American Rivers, a nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based conservation organization, and the Sierra Club plan to announce today at the Capitol in Harrisburg that the Susquehanna tops the list because of natural gas extraction, which puts clean drinking water at risk.

“The Susquehanna is a drinking water supply for more than 6 million people, it’s one of the longest rivers in the U.S., and it provides over half the fresh water to the Chesapeake Bay,” American Rivers spokeswoman Jessie Thomas-Blate said.

Susquehanna River Sentinel Don Williams, a Wilkes-Barre native who now lives in Philadelphia, nominated the river and worked to get it the designation, as he did in 2005. At that time the Susquehanna was considered most endangered due to threats from sewage discharge and a proposed inflatable dam. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permanently deflated the project in February 2008 by refusing a permit because it didn’t comply with the federal Clean Water Act.

“I wanted to just give up and worry about kayaking after the inflatable dam was done. That was the biggest threat, but this eclipses it by, I don’t know, tenfold, twentyfold,” Williams said. “Compared to this it was a drop in the bucket.”

He noted it’s the second year in a row a river made it to the list for concerns related to gas drilling: last year the Upper Delaware River topped the list. The “most endangered” designation helped the Delaware, and he wants it to do the same for the Susquehanna.

Hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” involves blasting millions of gallons of chemical-treated water thousands of feet underground to open cracks in the shale and release the natural gas.

Williams, who has a background in geology, said the threat is a combination of factors related to gas drilling, from withdrawing water from the Susquehanna and its creeks and streams to injecting that water underground, where more than 80 percent remains after the fracking process.

“Will we be dealing with contaminated groundwater 10, 15, 20 years from now?” he said. “Groundwater moves exceedingly slowly through bedrock, and we have to consider a lot of things.”

American Rivers and the Sierra Club want the state and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, which monitors water withdrawals in the river’s watershed, to put a moratorium on drilling-related activities.

Thomas-Blate said they want to ensure the best possible regulations are in place to protect drinking water – and to make sure they are enforceable, and the state has the capacity to do it.

Besides hoping for action on a state level, American Rivers is working on a national level to draw awareness to the oil and gas industry’s exemptions to a broad range of environmental regulations, Thomas-Blate said.

In a statement, Marcellus Shale Coalition president Kathryn Klaber said, “Despite the fact that the livelihoods of nearly 25,000 Gulf Coast residents are now hanging in the balance as the Mississippi River continues to swell at unthinkable rates, this organization – which ironically claims to stand ‘up for healthy rivers so communities can thrive’ – is seeking nothing more than to undercut the responsible development of clean burning, job-creating natural gas.”

Klaber continued, “Our work can and must be balanced with the protection of our environment, especially our water resources. It’s very sad and predictable, however, that some organizations will stop at nothing, disregarding facts and science at every turn, to thwart American energy production.”

SRBC spokeswoman Susan Obleski said water quality, not quantity, is the issue, and that’s the state Department of Environmental Protection’s domain.

“We believe it’s misguided to target the Susquehanna River Basin Commission because we are strictly a water quantity agency,” Obleski said.

She said the commission has protective conditions in place for sensitive areas, and puts withdrawals on hold altogether during droughts.

“Like with any other industry, when the natural gas companies submit a reasonable request for water that meets our standards, we have no legal grounds for denying that request,” Obleski said.

It would be “legally indefensible” to make gas companies stop withdrawals as long as Pennsylvania allows hydraulic fracturing, Obleski said. The SRBC does not approve withdrawals in New York’s portion of the Susquehanna River Basin because it has a moratorium, she said.

The Susquehanna River provides the Chesapeake Bay with 18 million gallons of fresh water every minute, and there are 1,440 minutes in a day, she said. The SRBC estimates that if the natural gas industry was at its peak, with all the companies active, they would use up two minutes’ worth of water that day, she said.