NORWICH – The Joint Landowners Coalition of New York is questioning whether one of the public health experts selected to review the state’s environmental study on shale gas development can be impartial.
According to an unofficial report from the Associated Press, New York’s health department named John Adgate, chairman of the Environmental and Occupational Health Department at the Colorado School of Public Health, among two others who will review health impact data on hydraulic fracturing, the process which releases natural gas from rock by injecting a well with millions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals, soap and sand.
Adgate is the author of a study on human health risks of air emissions near well sites in Garfield County, Colorado. The report, released last spring and based on three years of monitoring, found potentially toxic petroleum hydrocarbons in the air near the wells including benzene. Benzene is a well known carcinogen.
The landowners group, of which Chenango County-based Central New York Landowners is a member, said while it has confidence in New York’s health and environmental conservation departments “to guide us through” the review, it remained “concerned that one member of the committee is the author of a Colorado study which has been widely criticized.”
The experts will complete what is anticipated to be the final piece of the state’s long review of natural gas development in New York. DEC Commissioner Joe Martens said in September that Health Commissioner Nirav Shah would do the review with help from outside experts. The two other experts chosen for the health review were Lynn Goldman, dean of George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services; and Richard Jackson, chairman of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of California Los Angeles’ Fielding School of Public Health.
The DEC faces a regulatory deadline of Nov. 29 to complete the new permitting regulations. Martens said the agency’s proposals won’t be finalized until Shah’s health review is finished. If the deadline isn’t met, the regulations may have to be reopened to public comment. The state has had a moratorium on shale gas drilling since 2008, when regulators began an environmental review of fracking. Regulators contend that overall, water and air pollution problems related to gas drilling using hydraulic fracturing are rare, but environmental groups and some scientists say there hasn’t been enough research on those issues.
Chenango County Natural Gas consultant Steven Palmatier said Adgate’s involvement might be positive for the three-person independent committee, however. “He’s well known for his study of air quality around well sites,” he said.
“What’s going to come out, based on what I see in the SGEIS already, is that elevated benzene levels at the completion stage in drilling will be mitigated with requirements for ‘green’ completions. The diesel engines used on site, which are a source of benzene ... the companies will be required to fix them to have the most recent EPA-mandated mitigation devices on the exhaust.”
Palmatier also didn’t anticipate the public health review would be a long process because a health department advisory panel formed last year has been involved in the process “from the beginning.”
“I think there is a good possibility that it can be completed in time. I’m sure they have been looking at it for a while already,” he said.
Environmental groups criticized the state agencies for not making public the DEC health review that the outside experts will be evaluating.
“We continue to call on the state to perform a comprehensive public Health Impact Assessment,” said Katherine Nadeau of Environmental Advocates. “And to ensure the credibility of this study, strongly encourage the administration and the governor’s appointees to undertake a more open and transparent process that fully involves the public.”