SMYRNA – The past couple of months have been relatively quiet for those who have been impacted by the heavy truck traffic and noise from drilling activities in the Town of Smyrna.
That’s because the Smyrna Highway Department posted the roads on March 8 after determining damages on several town roads would be made worse with the spring thaw. The ban is to be lifted on Friday.
Highway Superintendent Gary R. Graham said Coye Hill, Beaver Meadow, Quaker Hill and Davis roads would be repaired by Norse Energy, Inc. this summer. The Norwegian company is the primary player in developing Chenango County’s natural gas laden sandstone and shale formations. It has been most active in Smyrna, where 13 wells have been drilled since 2007.
Graham said he wasn’t initially concerned about the roads, and now feels confident that Norse will repair them.
“They messed up the blacktop and subbase. We’re putting some price quotes together for them. We are under the impression that they are going to repair them,” he said.
Upon a recent visit to his family’s farm in German Hollow, Ed Bliss of western Colorado (where hundreds of wells have been drilled over the past decade) said he found the landscape and the roads “ripped up.”
“I’m not really an activist, but this concerns me. This is like being back home. I didn’t expect to see all the gas trucks. It’s like seeing the enemy coming,” he said.
If New York permits hydrofracking into shale, and Norse or other energy companies target the Marcellus in the southern portions of the county where it is the deepest, motorists can expect heavy truck traffic. A typical well site could involve between 40 and 50 trucks. There are five vertical Marcellus wells already permitted to be drilled in Coventry and Afton.
Natural Gas Committee Chairman Peter C. Flanagan said upon returning from a recent visit to Dimock, Pa., where drilling has been ongoing since 2008, that the traffic was “incredible.”
“It’s a serious issue in Dimock. Their roads aren’t as good as ours, but the amount of well services trucks on the interstate is incredible, and it was down to one lane. Whether that develops here, depends on whether they go for the Marcellus here,” he said.
Flanagan pointed to a Norse-permitted well in Preston that would involve a driveway onto county Rt. 4 that would lack sufficient sight distance and radius for tractor trailers to turn. He asked Chenango County Department of Public Works Director Randy Gibbon to monitor placement of the driveway, and to also investigate the legality of requiring gas companies to repair seasonal roads that towns don’t regularly maintain.
In a separate road use incident, Chenango County Department of Public Works Director Randy Gibbon pulled all of Norse’s seismic testing permits on county roadways after discovering a contractor not complying with uniform traffic control regulations. On a snowy day in December, Gibbon said he discovered a testing company’s rig parked on top of a hill on 10A in Preston without sufficient flags to caution motorists. He said yesterday that the ban continues.
Norse is also effectively at a standstill on connecting the newest extension of its pipeline to two existing wells and several more that are permitted to be drilled in Preston. The company’s permit to bore under state Rte. 23 is currently held up at the New York State Department of Transportation.
Bainbridge Highway Superintendent Gary Richman said seismic testing was conducted off town roads two years ago in his town and several properties have been leased, but there’s been no gas company action of late.
“We haven’t seen anything and I’m on the roads all of the time. A lot of people are excited about it, but a lot of people aren’t,” he said.
Supervisor Robert Briggs, R-Afton, who sold his land to Norse two years ago, also said the roads have been quiet.
“I’m sure there will be things later on, but I don’t expect to see anything until late summer or even later,” he said.
Norse spokesman Dennis Holbrook said given the political and environmental considerations going on right now, that the company has stepped back and is taking the time to identify its plans for going forward.
Further delays in the state’s environmental regulatory review process that were announced last week and a new two-year federal Environmental Protection Agency study of hydrofracking have made planning more challenging. The EPA study would determine whether the technology should fall under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.
Holbrook said he was personally upbeat about the future potential for New York, on a regulatory as well as geologic basis, however.
“We gave them (the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation) a tremendous administrative burden ... They are doing their due diligence. If it takes a month or two longer, I understand it.”
“The industry draws some comfort from the fact that we know how to do this and do it well. As long as science is allowed to justify itself, I think these issues will work themselves through.”
“I think New York is ready to turn the corner on this despite all the rhetoric,” he said.