NORWICH – A community action group charged with monitoring renewable energy sources in Chenango County filed an anti-natural gas drilling petition Monday, signed by nearly 600 county residents and visitors.

The petition, the second to be filed by local opposition groups, calls for a moratorium barring high volume/high pressure hydraulic fracturing until after the federal Environmental Protection Agency completes its evaluation of the impact of the technology on human health and the environment.

The Obama Administration initiated a study this spring on whether fracturing and fracturing fluids could contaminate drinking water supplies, the results of which aren’t due until 2012. Houston-based Halliburton Co., the firm that first employed the technology, recently agreed to provide EPA with thousands of pages of data on hydraulic fracturing by Jan. 31.

Hydraulic fracturing is a process in which natural-gas drillers create fractures in underground rock formations to extract natural gas.

The first local petition contained more than 3,000 signatures and asks for a total ban on natural gas drilling in Afton, Coventry, Bainbridge and the surrounding area.