CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

Don't look for the state to heed calls to stop or slow down gas drilling — even though the requests have come from such powerful interests as New York City, the Environmental Protection Agency and a union of Department of Environmental Conservation workers.

In the just-ended comment period on new regulations for gas drilling in the Marcellus shale, which sits beneath Sullivan County and much of the New York City watershed, many of the approximately 12,000 responses urged the state to scrap the regulations and redo them. Critics want new rules to ban drilling in the city watershed and address such issues as pollution from the horizontal drilling method, known as "fracking," and cumulative impacts.

But scrapping the regulations that allow drilling isn't likely to happen, says Gov. David Paterson's office.

"We need to wait and see what the final GEIS (Generic Environmental Impact Statement) is like," said Paterson spokesman Morgan Hook. "Calls for bans or further delays are premature. Why would we scrap the work done over the past 12 months?"

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