The Delaware River Frack Ban Coalition is pushing back on the Delaware River Basin Commission, who failed to fully ban fracking activity in the Basin earlier this month.
While the final adopted rule does prohibit the discharge of wastewater from high volume hydraulic fracturing to water or land, it will allow fracking wastewater importation into the Watershed. It will also allow the export of water from the Delaware River Watershed to support fracking operations elsewhere.
Deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network Tracy Carluccio says over 12,000 people submitted comments pushing for such a ban during a public comment period.
“It's pollution in another form," she says. "And we don't think that we should have to be choosing our poisons. Do we want to have them in our water directly discharged, or do we want to have them through air emissions that we breathe in or that contaminate our water indirectly but are still contaminated? We don't think that's right.”
The network says that the DRBC themselves produced an “extensive body of evidence” in 2021 including the threat of depletion and degradation of fragile water resources that are the sole source of drinking water for millions and are essential for economic vitality in the region.
“We feel like we really have to do this in order to protect the watershed," Carluccio says. "We feel that the pressure from industry to get rid of fracking wastewater that's produced in fracking regions is going to increase. As time goes by, it's not going to decrease and that's because these super wells that they're building use exponentially large amounts of water.”
Carluccio says they’ll continue to fight for a full ban.
“In the meantime, we have our work cut out for us," she says. "We will be vigilant and looking for individual applications and opposing every one of them.”
