Hydrofracking
And the Lake
The Skaneateles Lake watershed lies within five towns and three counties. Only a fraction of each town lies within the watershed bounds. As you can see by the map, the watershed is small, due to the steep hills surrounding the lake. The DEC has banned high volume hydrofracking within the Skaneateles watershed and also 4000’ beyond those bounds. However, this is scant protection for the integrity of the lake. Though there will be no high volume drilling, there will be truck traffic hauling the chemicals, and the millions of gallons of toxic waste from nearby wells. There will be downwind air pollution effects - dozens of chemicals that outgas on a daily basis from the compressor stations and condensate tanks –requisite for the lives of the wells. Those chemicals will settle wherever the wind takes them, can’t legislate that out of the watershed. As for water contamination – most of the incidents happen at or near the surface, not thousands of feet below. |
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Problem is, our watershed and our state - is a web of surface water – springs, creeks, streams, ponds, wetlands – all exquisitely vulnerable to a surface incidents. The underground aquifers are shallow and unmapped. There are thirty thousand abandoned undocumented gas wells in NYS – how many in the watershed towns? Anyone’s guess. Add to that abandoned water wells and naturally occurring fractures in the bedrock and you have a recipe for contamination with any spill, cement casing failure, or accident. Routes 41 and 41A as well as route 20 are major thoroughfares. We were not successful in stopping the garbage trucks – if those frack trucks – at the rate of 1000 per day are crisscrossing our watershed, our risk of water contamination is very real even if no drilling happens here.
The DEC needs to paint a broader brushstroke on the map if the Skaneateles
Lake watershed is to be protected.