Deputy Mayor for Operations Ed Skyler speaks at a public hearing at Stuyvesant High School

The Bloomberg administration indicated that it may back an all-out ban on natural gas drilling within the city’s massive upstate watershed, which supplies 9 million New York residents with drinking water.

Ed Skyler, Deputy Mayor for Operations, said at a public hearing earlier this week that drilling could force the city to build expensive water treatment plants to filter out poisonous chemicals it leaves behind.

The mayor will wait for the outcome of a consultants’ study that is due in December before making a final decision, Skyler added. But unless the study shows that drilling can be done safely, the state should “ban altogether” any drilling in the watershed, he said.

Skyler delivered the remarks before a boisterous audience in the auditorium at Stuyvesant High School in downtown Manhattan, where 160 people lined up to voice their concerns about the controversial drilling proposal, which has pitted New Yorkers’ economic realities against health and environmental concerns over the city’s water supply.

The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation has published a decision arguing that to allow drilling could lead to billions of dollars of economic benefits and tax receipts for the state–as long as it is done safely. The energy industry, in turn, has argued that not only can the drilling be done safely, but it can also spur “green” job creation, since natural gas is a cleaner-burning fuel than coal.

Last month, Chesapeake Energy Corporation, a gas company that owns rights to 5,000 acres within the watershed, said in a press release that it would not pursue drilling on those acres. It said that it may still pursue drilling elsewhere.

However, people at the hearing said they did not trust the company to keep its promise and insisted that a ban on drilling in the watershed was the only way to make sure Chesapeake would keep its promise.

Opponents argue that the drilling would inevitably result in poisonous chemicals seeping into the city’s water supply, requiring New York to invest billions in water filtration plants to treat the 1.5 billion gallons of water that currently supply the city with drinking water that does not need to be filtered.

Drilling would rely on a technique called “hydraulic fracturing,” in which water laced with various chemicals is used to break through rocks and allow natural gas to come up from the ground more easily.

The Department of Environmental Conservation has decided to require all drillers using hydraulic fracturing to register with the state and reveal the chemicals used in the process. But opponents say that wouldn’t do much to safeguard the safety of the drinking water.

“Sure, there’s a couple of things in here that you wouldn’t mind drinking,” Eric Goldstein, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told people gathered outside the hearing as he pointed to a giant print-out of the list of ingredients commonly used in hydraulic fracturing.

“But ethyl benzene – that’s a known carcinogen,” he added, as students leaving school raced past him on the way home.

Goldstein said job creation is a laudable goal but it shouldn’t trump public concerns over safety–a sentiment echoed by other public officials gathered at the hearing.

“There are many ways to create green jobs and economic development that do not involve sacrificing water supplies across the state,” New York City Council Member James Gennaro (D-Fresh Meadows) said in an interview.

Gennaro, who chairs the council’s environmental protection committee, has been a strident opponent of the drilling proposal.

He has introduced a council resolution urging Congress to ban an exemption in federal law that allows energy companies to drill near water supplies.

“Two important things happened tonight,” Gennaro said. “The deputy mayor came to the meeting and the word ‘ban’ passed his lips.”

Hamilton Park, Jersey City, N.J.

Jersey City, NJ – The Hamilton Park neighborhood is one of the most desirable places to live in this old city at the river’s edge. Over the past twenty-five years it has become a trendy place for commuters and young families to call home. But recently the city’s industrial past resurfaced — literally.

During a long-awaited renovation that began this summer, routine soil testing found lead in portions of the park. Though the amount of lead was on par with other urban areas, it registered above the state maximum for residential districts.

“Even though the levels were not off the charts, they didn’t correspond to the residential levels that we wanted to uphold,” said Jersey City landscape architect, Brian Weller.

The result? More tests and more contamination.

Arsenic was found in the northern sections of the park. The amount in the soil was small, 25 – 26 parts per million, but that is 27% more the maximum permitted by New Jersey.

High exposure to lead can cause developmental and other problems in children and elevated levels of arsenic can cause neurological problems or death.

How did such hazards end up in a city park in one of Jersey City’s most desirable areas? Glenn Wrigley, Jersey City’s chief architect, speculated that there have been many different ways this kind of contamination could have been deposited here over the century and a half since it was opened.

Hamilton Park, a 5.56-acre square, was first established in the 1850s and functioned the same way it does now — as a small respite for wealthy, urban families. Over the next 100 years, however, Jersey City became heavily industrialized. In 1927 the Holland Tunnel, funneling cars and trucks into Manhattan, was finished just half a mile from the park. This is probably where some of the contamination comes from, according to Wrigley.

Other sources date back even farther in history. “Lots of people used to burn coal here and the ash in the air from that practice would have contained lead,” he said. And years ago, arsenic was used as a chemical preservative for wood. “There may have been a wooden structure there at some point,” Wrigley said. “Also, arsenic used to be used in pesticides. It would be reasonable to think that some older pesticides were used there, too.”

However, Wrigley conceded, nobody really knows how the contaminants got there. But there was a neighborhood consensus about what to do with it.

In early September Wrigley met with 50 local residents at a Hamilton Park Neighborhood Association meeting and outlined remediation options for the park: portions could be capped with filter fabric and clean topsoil to contain the contamination, or all the soil could be removed and replaced.

Wrigley recommended capping the site, noting that full soil removal would both cost more (around $1 million, compared to between $75,000 – $100,000 for capping) and would mean cutting down about 30 trees from the park. He said that contractors would make sure the filter meets state standards.

In an email, Sam Stoia, a former president of the neighborhood association, said the city did a great job explaining the pros and cons of capping versus removal. “They went as far as to get community consensus on two options for treatment,” Stoia said in the email. “I thought that was going beyond their duty.”

Still, at least one local resident thinks that the city should remove all contaminated soil. Karen Vonstappenbeck lives across the street from Hamilton Park with her family. Sitting outside with her children as they ate after-school snacks, Vonstappenbeck said she knew about the contamination but hadn’t known about the community meeting. “I cannot believe they would even consider not just cleaning it up,” she said, shaking her head.

To that, Wrigley countered, “Nobody has approached me with that complaint directly. The only reasonable response is that we are following state protocol. We’ve discussed options with the public and we believe this is the most responsible manner in which to proceed.”

Wrigley put the amount of pollution in the park in context, saying the level of contamination is relatively low and unlikely to be dangerous to people.

“If you had one million grains of sand, only 26 of them would be arsenic,” he said. “You would have to, literally, eat the dirt for 30 years to be in danger.”

The Remedial Action Plan, a document that outlines the city’s strategy for capping Hamilton Park as well as the park’s history, was approved by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on October 9th.

The renovation at Hamilton Park continued in the rest of the square while the remediation proposal was being reviewed. City officials expect the renovation to be completed by late March or early April.

When the work is done and the digging equipment is finally gone, people in the neighborhood will be able to use the historic park the way so many previous generations have enjoyed it.

But there will be one restriction: “You can’t just go in there and plant a tree wherever you want anymore,” said Weller, the city architect. Because the contaminated soil will remain in the park beneath the topsoil of the cap, digging will be tightly controlled. “There will be absolutely no extracurricular digging,” Weller said.