Fracking is now permanently banned in the Delaware River watershed.
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) voted Thursday to ban fracking, or high volume hydraulic fracturing. Wes Gillingham is associate director of Catskill Mountainkeeper. He says environmentalists have been advocating for a permanent ban for more than a decade.
“The Catskills, upper Delaware, the whole Delaware Basin is a place that deserves to be treated much better than letting fracking come in here,” Gillingham says. “So, it’s a, it’s a day of hoorah for all of us.”
The four governors who are members of the Commission, from New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania voted in favor of the ban for the basin that provides drinking water to 15 million people.
