ALBANY – Preston Supervisor Peter C. Flanagan was given only a brief opportunity to speak late in the day during an Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee hearing in Albany Wednesday.
Instead of reading from testimony he later submitted, Flanagan said he spent most of his allotted time describing road damage, seismic testing and unit spacing issues that have arisen in his town.
The majority of private land in Preston has been leased, primarily by Nornew, Inc. Four successful wells have been drilled, 21 total are planned, and Nornew is currently leasing land for a private pipeline. The industry’s attention to Chenango and other Southern Tier counties is sparked by several formations of natural gas producing sandstone and shale, particularly the massive Marcellus shale formation.
While the gas company did repair a road damaged by equipment being moved to a drilling site, in his address, Flanagan called for “adequate protections for such incidents going forward.” He also suggested that municipalities and adjoining landowners should be notified prior to 3-dimensional seismic tests across private property.
For the most part, however, Flanagan said this morning that he attempted to correct and clarify misstatements made by other presenters at the hearing.
“It seems clear that the state and the DEC (New York State Department of Environmental Conservation) has a long way to go to educate themselves about the local issues surrounding gas drilling,” he said.
According to press reports this morning, State Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Pete Grannis spent much of his two hours promising that gas exploration along a wide swath of the Southern Tier and the western Catskills won’t happen unless it’s proven safe for the environment.
Ecological concerns center on the massive amounts of chemically treated water shot into deep wells to release pockets of gas. Grannis’ agency is updating its mining regulations to deal with procedure, often called “hydrofracking” for the way it fractures rock.
Lawmakers wanted assurances that the million-plus gallons of water needed for each well would not suck local water supplies dry, that the contaminated water that comes back up the well would not be left in pits that could be washed away in a flood, and that convoys of water trucks would not clog rural roads.
Grannis said those issues would be addressed in the agency’s environmental review due next spring. The department is currently revising and receiving input to update environmental quality review regulations for the industry.
“We are fully committed to doing a comprehensive and thoughtful review,” Grannis said.
Flanagan said Grannis did promise to increase staffing for the NYSDEC.
There have been no Marcellus drilling permits granted in New York.
The Marcellus land edges into New York City’s Catskill watershed. The city has a waiver from federal officials that allows it to avoid filtering that water, and city officials fear drilling in the watershed could threaten that waiver. New York City Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Emily Lloyd this summer suggested a 1-mile no-drill zone around reservoirs and other watershed infrastructure.
Paul Rush, a deputy commissioner with the city agency, told lawmakers that hydrofracking “may pose great risks to the ecology of the surrounding area and to the water supply system.”
Associated Press Writer Michael Hill contributed to this story.