Locals To Governor: Scrap Gas-Drilling Rules; Start Again

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With the deadline for comment looming, local environmental groups are asking Gov. David Paterson to throw out proposed regulations of natural-gas drilling in Otsego County then start again.
The deadline is Thursday, Dec. 31, on the DSGEIS – the draft supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement – governing horizontal hydro-fracking.
It’s a new technology that could extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation that undergirds the county.
But horizontal hydro-fracking requires the use of unspecific toxic chemicals to break up the shale and allow the gas to come to the surface.
“Our groups are concerned, not so much with contamination that may occur thousands of feet below, but the cumulative impact of a series of small spills impacting the surface water,” Bob Eklund, chairman of the recently formed Butternut Valley Alliance.
He was interviewed Monday, Dec. 28, the day before a 10 a.m. press conference four environmental groups planned in Oneonta City Hall to detail their letters to Paterson.
“There are far too many loopholes, weaknesses and inaccuracies to allow for safe drilling within the borders of the state,” Oneonta Alderman Erik Miller, who is also Otsego County Conservation Association executive director, said in a letter he planned to read at the press conference.
“The state is looking at short-term financial gains to rebound from a billion-dollar budget deficit and not the long-term financial impacts this industry will have on the state,” Miller said.
Lou Allstadt, the former Mobil executive vice president, on behalf of Otsego 2000, declared:  “The current GEIS should be scrapped.”
A “totally rewritten document” should require “ultra-safe setbacks” from critical areas, public disclosure of the contents of hydro-fracking fluids, provisions to control wear and tear on local roads, the posting of performance bonds, and imposition of a severance tax.
In recent days, New York City authorities have declared their opposition to any natural-gas drilling in the vicinity of the city’s Catskill reservoirs.
“If water quality is a concern to New York, so should it be for the rest of us in Upstate New York,” said Eklund.
The groups – the fourth is the state chapter of Trout Unlimited, represented locally by David Brandt, Oneonta – are unsure DEC has the staffing and capacity to monitor hundreds of wells statewide, he said.
“This is an issue that’s not going to end on the 31st,” Eklund said.  “I can assure you of that.”