ALLENTOWN — The agency that oversees water quality and quantity in the four-state Delaware River basin issued proposed regulations on Thursday for the natural gas drilling industry, launching what is certain to be a heated debate pitting energy companies and property owners who have signed lucrative leases against environmentalists, sporting groups and residents worried about their drinking water supplies.

The Delaware River Basin Commission published the long-awaited regulations on its website. They govern a range of drilling activities, including water withdrawals, well pad siting and wastewater disposal, and require drilling companies to post a bond of $125,000 per well to cover the plugging and restoration of abandoned wells and the remediation of any pollution.

The commission — a powerful federal-interstate compact agency — has declared a moratorium on Marcellus Shale drilling projects in the Delaware River basin until the rulemaking process is complete.

The regulations proposed Thursday are meant to protect “an incredible regional resource for the mid-Atlantic area,” said Carol Collier, the DRBC’s executive director.

The panel has jurisdiction because the drilling process will require the withdrawal of huge amounts of water from the watershed’s streams and rivers. The commission also cites the potential for groundwater and surface water contamination.

Energy companies have leased thousands of acres in the Delaware River basin, hoping to tap vast stores of gas in a sprawling rock formation — the Marcellus Shale — that experts believe could become the nation’s most productive gas field.

Farmers and other landowners say drilling will bring jobs and prosperity, chafing at what they see as unwarranted regulatory foot-dragging by the basin commission.

Drilling opponents, meanwhile, contend that large-scale gas exploration so close to crucial waterways and renowned fisheries invites catastrophe. They wanted the agency to complete a proposed cumulative impact study before issuing the draft rules.

“It’s a grave mistake for the DRBC to rush forward with half-baked regulations before the needed scientific analysis is done through a cumulative impact analysis,” Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of Delaware Riverkeeper Network, a nonprofit advocacy group, said in a statement ahead of the rules’ publication.