Fracking Ban in the Delaware River Basin Survives a Republican Challenge (For Now)

A Republican-led effort to end the Delaware River Basin’s ban on fracking fell short on Tuesday after an amendment to the Water Resources Development Act was not brought before a congressional committee, allowing the longstanding restriction to stand for now.

The amendment, authored by U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, would have stripped the Delaware River Basin Commission, an interstate regulator, of its authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing in the 330 mile-long watershed that stretches from upstate New York to the mouth of the Delaware Bay, a region that supplies drinking water to millions of people.

The measure would also have pre-emptively stopped any fracking bans imposed by two other regulators, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission in central Pennsylvania, and the Potomac River Basin Compact in Washington, D.C., and surrounding states. Perry’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The Delaware River Basin Commission said it looked like the rules governing the three commissions would remain unchanged, and that the House of Representatives will now vote on the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) without proposed changes to the fracking ban. 

“Our understanding is the House intends to consider WRDA 2026 under a suspension of rules, meaning that no further amendments would be offered and preserving the status quo in the three Mid-Atlantic river basins, but that may be subject to change,” said Beth Brown, a spokeswoman for the commission.

Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the environmental group Delaware Riverkeeper Network, said the absence of Perry’s amendment was a win for water quality, but it’s a victory that she doesn’t expect to last.

“They missed this opportunity to overturn the commission’s authority to ban fracking … but we have no doubt they will try again through whatever means they can conjure,” she said. Carluccio said the Trump administration’s rollbacks of environmental regulations and support for accelerated fossil fuel development had emboldened some elected officials. 

Still, DRN’s leader, Maya van Rossum, called the amendment’s withdrawal an “amazing success” driven by the efforts of environmental groups whose members urged Congress to reject the amendment.

“We made clear to members of Congress that the DRBC frack ban was critical for protecting our communities, was based on sound science, and the reality of devastation we can see playing out elsewhere in the region and the nation when fracking for fossil fuels happens,” she said.

The amendment would have overturned a ban on fracking that stood formally since 2021 and informally since 2010 when the commission first proposed it. The agency, representing Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and the federal government, concluded after about a decade of public comment that allowing fracking in the basin would have “significant, immediate and long-term” risks to water quality throughout the region, and could contaminate water that some 15 million people in the region use for drinking, agriculture and industry. New York City, Trenton, Philadelphia and Wilmington all rely on the river basin for water.

Many studies and reports by government agencies outside the Delaware River Basin concluded that fracking had “adversely impacted” surface and groundwater resources through spills and releases of fracking chemicals, including those “for which toxicity has not been determined,” the commission said in adopting the rule.

Perry has tried to overturn the DRBC ban before. In 2025, he introduced the DRILL Now Act, aimed at preventing the commission from “enforcing regulations more stringent than those set by the State in which they are enforced.” 

“We must prevent unelected bureaucrats in the various river basin commissions from restricting Pennsylvanians to exercise their mineral rights,” Perry said at the time. “My legislation ensures that Pennsylvania continues to be a leading producer of natural gas.”

The ban was a landmark regulation adopted by the commission after more than a decade of advocacy and public comment from environmental groups. Supporters have fiercely defended it as a critical safeguard for public health and a restraint on the production of climate-warming natural gas.

Before the committee’s decision on Tuesday, the commission issued a statement saying the proposed action would undo decades of water-quality improvements.

“Joint management through the DRBC has protected and improved water supply and water quality for millions of water users for more than six decades,” said the DRBC, which was established by an act of Congress in 1961. “The recent legislative proposal poses a significant threat to this process. As written, the proposal could give favorable status to one industry above all others including public water supply, energy generation, agriculture and more.”

The three commissions “may not finalize, implement or enforce any regulation relating to hydraulic fracturing that is issued pursuant to any authority other than that of the state in which the regulation is to be implemented or enforced,” the proposed amendment said.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, a trade group for Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry, said it strongly supports the amendment, which is designed to end what the group said was an illegal fracking ban.

MSC President Jim Welty said the DRBC ban “has done irreparable harm to many landowners, and it is past time for Congress to remedy this injustice.” 

“It has never been the job of a river basin commission to regulate economic activity. It is their job to manage the water resources within their basin for the benefit of all parties,” he said in a statement. Last year, the trade group estimated that the ban prevented access to $40 billion worth of gas at 2025 prices.

Steve Miano, an environmental lawyer with Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller in Philadelphia, said the proposed withdrawal of the right to regulate fracking would run counter to the DRBC’s “Compact”: a federal law that tasks the DRBC with ensuring water quality and quantity in its watershed and resolving any disputes between member states.

“There would still be a legitimate argument that Congress can’t undo this authority of the DRBC to regulate because it was granted that authority by the Supreme Court,” he said. “There could well be a fight in federal court over whether Congress can strip the DRBC of its ability to do something that is in their Compact.”

President Donald Trump has called for the accelerated development of domestic fossil fuels, in response to what he calls an “energy emergency,” an assertion challenged by environmentalists.

Delaware Riverkeeper Network, which has advocated for and defended the region’s fracking ban, said the amendment threatened the environment and water quality in a densely populated region. 

“What they are actually trying to do is strip the power away from the DRBC and simply leave it to the states,” van Rossum said, before the committee’s action. “That takes away their independent regulatory authority when it comes to fracking.”

Although the DRBC operates with authorization from the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as federal and state lawmakers, the amendment has legal credibility and poses a threat to the basin, van Rossum said.

“Nobody should be discounting or undervaluing the tremendous threat that this poses to our watershed in terms of fracking, and to the authority of the DRBC,” she said.

Josh Fox, a filmmaker and environmental activist whose 2010 film “Gasland” included footage of a resident of heavily fracked Susquehanna County in northeast Pennsylvania setting his methane-soaked kitchen tap water on fire, said ending the ban could contaminate water far from drilling sites in Pennsylvania. 

“If you are fracking on the Pennsylvania side, all of that wastewater goes right into the river. You have a buffer zone right now between any fracking that takes place in PA, and the Delaware River. That area is the watershed for New York City, Philadelphia, southern New Jersey,” he said.

New Jersey and Delaware do not have gas reserves, while New York banned fracking with a state law in 2014.

Fox said Pennsylvania has done a “terrible” job of regulating fracking, which has become widespread in much of the state since the mid-2000s, making Pennsylvania the second-largest U.S. producer of natural gas after Texas. A 2020 grand jury report on fracking concluded that state regulators failed to “properly protect the health, safety and welfare of the thousands of Pennsylvania citizens who were affected by this industry.”