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The battle over hydraulic fracturing in the state of New York pits farmers against environmentalists, neighbor vs. neighbor, as gas companies wait to find out if they'll be able to unlock the natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation thousands of feet below the earth's surface.

As a panel appointed by New York's governor looks into whether it can be done safely in New York, landowners look with envy toward neighboring Pennsylvania, where gas companies are paying in excess of $1,000 per acre plus royalties for the right to drill for natural gas on a property.

Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, involves injecting a mixture of water and chemicals deep into the earth. The pressure causes shale rock formations to fracture and natural gas is released in the process. The fluid is then extracted and the natural gas is mined through the well. Some fracking operations have been linked to the contamination of drinking water supplies, and that led to a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in New York.

Judy Whittaker hopes to one day have a drilling rig on her property if and when that moratorium is lifted. The 1,000-acre dairy farm in Whitney Point, a small town in rural northwest New York, has been in her family for more than 100 years.

"We hope that our farm would be able to be sustainable in the future ... for our grandchildren to be able to be here and make a profit at farming, at the thing that we all love," said Whittaker.

While Whittaker's family has been milking cows for four generations, they still struggle to get by year after year. The added income from a natural gas lease on her property holds the promise of financial security.

"If we were able to get natural gas drilling I think it would definitely make a less stressful life for those in the future that are on this farm, not having to worry so much about the price of milk and where the money is coming from," said Whittaker. "They would have something to fall back on."

Opponents of fracking raise concerns about its impact on drinking water. Whittaker isn't worried. "I believe that we know our land the best so we ought to be the ones choosing the best use for our land."

She said she's confident that with proper oversight fracking can be done safely.

"I'm very comfortable with the regulations that they are proposing. It's tough laws now and it's going to be even tougher if implemented fully the way it will be."

No one says a fracking operation is completely risk free. About an hour's drive southeast of Whittaker's farm lies New York City's protected watershed in the Catskill Mountains. It's part of the source of 1.1 billion gallons of water that flows to the city each day.

"It's too much of a risk ... not a risk the city of New York is willing to take," said Paul Rush, deputy commissioner at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. It's his job to assure that every drop of water that makes it to a faucet in New York is as clean as possible.

"We have 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes in the New York City system with a capacity of 580 billion gallons."

As Rush watched water pouring into the massive Rondout Reservoir, he said, "The possibility of chemicals getting into the water table, the possibility of chemical spills in the watershed itself, the disturbances in the watershed changing the character of it, deforestation for the construction of roads, are all potential impacts on our system."

The Department of Environmental Protection does not use water filtration systems. Instead, it relies on natural filtration and keeping the water clean at the source. It only adds a few chemicals, to kill any remaining pathogens and to strengthen tooth enamel, before water reaches faucets in the city 100 miles away. It's some of the cleanest municipal drinking water in the world and in order to keep it that way, the governor's panel on fracking is effectively banning gas mining in the New York City watershed.

The debate over fracking in New York is heated. More than 65,000 comments were submitted by the public during the state's environmental review process. Kate Sinding, an attorney with the environmental group the National Resources Defense Council, is among those leading the fight against fracking.

"What we've seen in state after state is that as this activity comes into the places where people live, comes into communities, there are tremendous impacts or potential impacts on people's drinking-water supplies if it's not properly regulated or evaluated," Sinding said.

New Yorkers only have to look over the border in Pennsylvania to find an example of a fracking operation gone wrong.

"In the community of Dimock, Pennsylvania," Sinding said, "an aquifer was contaminated by bad drilling and fracking practices by a gas company. In addition to which there were a huge number of spills. It was a sort of horror story of what goes wrong when an industry isn't effectively regulated."

A pair of university studies that came out over the past few months, one from the University of Texas and the other from Stanford, showed the process of fracking itself doesn't appear to pose a risk to drinking water. The studies found no record of a drinking water supply being contaminated by fracking fluids injected into shale formations several thousand feet below the Earth's surface. But the studies reported that shoddy drilling practices, accidents and poor oversight above ground have led to contaminated water wells.

"I'm not trying to deny the existence of contamination, but the mechanism by which that contamination occurred is not the hydraulic fracturing mechanism," said Mark Zoback, a geophysics professor at Stanford University who studied this form of drilling for natural gas. He also served on the Energy Department's committee that examined fracking.

While tens of thousands of gas wells have been drilled across the country in recent years, he says there have been relatively few cases of chemicals contaminating drinking water supplies. "The number is more like dozens," said Zoback.

University of Texas Geologist Chip Groat also studied fracking. His findings back up much of what Zoback reported.

"We didn't find (anything) happening related to shale gas that called for draconian measures in terms of regulations or prohibitions," Groat said.

Sinding believes Zoback's and Groat's findings don't reflect reality. She says in many states regulators have close relationships with the gas industry and they don't fully investigate claims of contamination.

"The other issue is one of the gas companies settling with people and then subjecting them to nondisclosure agreements, which is the industry standard." Sinding said such arrangements result in cases of contamination not being fully reported to local municipalities.

Sinding and Zoback agree on one thing: The best way to assure that there is no contamination from a fracking operation is to make sure there are very stringent guidelines in place and that the drilling companies are closely monitored by state agencies with frequent inspections. More at http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/09/us/new-york-fracking/index.html?hpt=hp_b
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