LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

 1-8-10

Welcome, New Decade! ...Er, Wait Just A Minute
To the Editor:
In the months just before the Year 2000, there was a lot of silliness. Many thought their computers would crash.  Some believed the world might end. 
Just as silly was the belief that 2000 was the first year of the 21st century.
Eventually, common sense prevailed and 2001 was recognized as the beginning of the new century.
Recently, I’ve heard some mention on TV of 2010 being the first year of a new decade. 
Obviously, some who have a clear conception of months, weeks, days, hours, etc., lose contct with reality when considering decades and centuries.
A decade is ten (10) years; every decade ends in a number with a final digit of 0.  A century is one hundred (100) years; every century ends in a naumber with O the final digit.
Surely, this is only common sense – whatever happened to common sense?
WILLIAM F. ROBERTS
Otego

If It’s Unsafe, Don’t Drill
To the Editor:
For the past two years I have been trying to check out the reasons for the support of gas drilling.
First of course, is that our farmers are not being paid enough to even meet their costs. However, here is a reported statement from a couple shopping in Cooperstown, ”We just leased our land. We had our doubts, but the country needs alternative energy.”
Natural gas is an ancient fossil fuel – formed just as coal and oil, also causing CO2 climate change. The industry and oversight should be spent on real alternative energy: hydro, wind, biofuels and solar.
U.S. Rep. Scott Murphy, D-20th, said he supports safe drilling.  Right now, that is wishful thinking.  Past drilling in the west, in Texas and even in Pennsylvania shows drilling will endanger the source of our most critical water.
Bob Homovich of Delaware County said that gas drilling is no different than quarrying blue stone or harvesting trees or farming the land. That might be so, if gas grew on trees; unfortunately the gas is in rock, a mile beneath us and our natural aquifers and is not renewable.
Lee Fuller, a gas spokesman, wrote in another newspaper that only .5 percent of the fluid pumped in the ground will be chemicals. These have been shown to be bioaccumulative substances, carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxicants, neurotoxicants and hormone disruptors. This is nothing he would want his children to drink.
I have read and heard interpretations of the dGEIS proposed plan by geologists, biologists, chemists and lawyers. Many of us question the financial and human resources the state has to protect our water, air and community.
If there is no safe drilling, there should be no drilling.
DOROTHY HUDSON
Cooperstown