NORWICH – Chenango County officials monitoring the natural gas industry plan to develop permitting procedures for companies wanting to bore under roads, and make them available to towns.

Nornew Inc. has already bored under county Rt. 16 in Plymouth and on three town roads in Smyrna. An 8-inch pipeline is planned to go beneath Rt. 22 in the very near future, said a company spokesman.

Supervisor James B. Bays, D-Smyrna, said he had been involved in two of his town’s road borings thus far, but one occurred before a notification process was in place.

“The agreed-to protocol is for them to contact us, and they have been now. Like anything else we do, we need standardization and protocols. We are moving in that direction,” Bays said.

Nornew would prefer to cut a trench across a roadway to lay pipeline perpendicular to it because boring underground is much more expensive. “But it’s better for the road in the long run instead of having to patch it,” said Nornew’s Dennis Holbrook. The company did receive permission from town officials to cut through a seasonal road in Smyrna.