SHERBURNE – A map of where natural gas companies have leased land for drilling and transmission purposes will be presented as part of the Rogers Environmental Education Center’s Earthfest event on Saturday.
Members of the drilling opposition group, called CDOG, invite the public to see how their communities could be impacted by possible permitting, testing, drilling and pipeline infrastructure.
The eight annual Earthfest at Rogers is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday at the Rogers Center, 2721 state Hwy. 80, in Sherburne. Environmental Educator Laura Carey said the event is a celebration of Earth Day and intended “to raise people’s awareness about the natural world and about how human actvities can in fact impact the environment.”
The CDOG organization, representing Chenango, Delaware and Otsego counties, has been researching public records since January in order to locate and record every leased property in the three counties. The information was later transferred into large-scale town maps. According to its website, the group plans to further use its database of information to reach out to lessors, to neighbors whose properties will be subject to compulsory integration and to non-resident landowners.
In an ongoing effort to educate the public, which began when the coalition was formed last June, CDOG will also present the half-hour film, “Rural Impact’ from 7 to 9 p.m., Tuesday, May 5 at the Hamilton Library. The film will precede a discussion of the natural gas industry in southern Madison and northern Chenango counties.
The group’s common concern is that unlike traditional gas drilling in porous rocks, the gas sought in the Marcellus Shale formation is trapped too tightly within various types of stone layers to be extracted safely. The group’s mission is to: 1) create, assist, and coordinate action groups in the region; 2) assemble and disseminate information to defend our families, land, and resources from potential harm; 3) critique agencies, leasing agents, and officeholders who downplay or obscure the dangers of gas drilling; and 4) help local governments strengthen and assert their power to protect their communities.
In a recent press release to The Evening Sun, Afton-based CDOG leader Mike Bernhard called out the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission “for promoting the interests of the energy industry” and not alerting communities to possible water contamination from drilling. The organization last year reported that there were no instances of drinking water contamination in over one million hyrdrofracking jobs in New York.
“The DEC swallowed that claim whole,” wrote Bernhard in the April 24 release, “and in 2008 presented it as fact in a series of presentations to state legislators, pushing passage of the new spacing law that expedited permitting of the intensive Marcellus Shale drilling coming our way. ... Of course, there were thousands of documented instances of groundwater contamination from hydraulic fracturing. But they were easy to ignore when they were somewhere far away - Colorado, Wyoming, or Texas.”
Bernhard pointed to recent statements from John Hanger, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (where exploration and recovery within the Marcellus is in full swing), indicating that the chemicals used in hydrofracking will have an impact on natural resources.
“Then came the New Year’s Eve explosion, spills and waterwell pollution in Hickory and Dimock in Pennsylvania. ... Hanger simply changed his tune to say: ‘You can’t do a large amount of drilling and have zero impact. There’s going to be a lot of good that comes from drilling in Pennsylvania, but there are also going to be some problems...we run a certain amount of risk because of the benefits,’” Bernhard wrote.
Bernhard said CDOG considers the “environmentally sensible solution” is to ban natural gas drilling everywhere in New York State.
For more information about CDOG, visit the following website: un-naturalgas.org/organizers.htm.