When it comes to finding a major culprit for the tainted air in a wintry New York, one often needs to look no farther than out the window to see a big building spewing black smoke.
The source is often No. 6 heating oil, the cheapest but most viscous type pumped into aging boilers, or its cousin No. 4 heavy oil, which is only slightly less noxious.
City officials have already promised to introduce regulations over the next year to phase out both types. But the issue has acquired a bit of urgency since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley, released a comprehensive survey of air quality in the city two weeks ago.
The study found the highest levels of fine particles, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants in neighborhoods where many residential and commercial buildings burn No. 4 or No. 6 oil.
Now pressure is building on the administration to give buildings a firm 10-year deadline for switching to cleaner oil or to natural gas. Environmental groups and the American Lung Association said the move would significantly reduce soot pollution, alleviating heart and lung ailments.
“The water is so saturated with methane and other chemicals it is not to be used for human consumption,” said Bernice Angely, who’s had water trucked to her home 10 miles west of town since her well blew up in July 2007.
Petroglyph Energy Inc., a Boise, Idaho-based firm that has worked the rolling plains of the Raton Basin since 1999, suspended drilling until it can stem the methane. Colorado also is rewriting rules that had allowed Petroglyph to discharge water runoff from its drilling into streams and creeks.
Somebody is going to have to pay for that, right?
But Petroglyph says it’s not clear the drilling caused the methane leaks or prompted other area water wells to run dry. Eying what it calls an extremely promising natural gas field, it believes a shallow water formation tapped by area homeowners isn’t connected to a deeper one pumped by the company for its drilling operations.
Petroglyph chief operating officer Paul Powell also believes a growing number of new homes in the area could explain some of the dry water wells.
“We’ll do what we need to do,” Powell said, stressing that his firm is working with the state on a solution.
According to a high tech study commissioned by a concerned Mayor Bloomberg and generously funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, climate change caused by human-created greenhouse gases is threatening the health, livelihood and security of New Yorkers—especially those who take the subway to work.
