Interests line up on both sides of gas drilling debate
NORWICH – Greene businessman Enzo Olivieri warns that a moratorium on natural gas drilling in New York would kill everyone’s hopes for new jobs, and the anti-drillers pushing for it will ultimately succeed because they have deeper pockets.
“That’s what it all boils down to. They, who for the most part come from downstate, have more money than we do up here, so they’re more powerful,” he said.
Olivieri’s exasperation was recently relayed in a phone call to The Evening Sun after the New York State Senate voted Aug. 3 to impose a nine-month moratorium on the controversial high water volume horizontal drilling technique, called hydraulic fracturing. The restaurant owner and real estate developer said he fears that the promise of economic recovery in the area and throughout upstate New York may now simply “wash downstate along with the region’s water.”
Referring to New York City-based protesters who want to ban drilling, he said, “They are the first to use our resources, our water and our crops, and not pay the adequate amount for it. Now they want to take our jobs away?”
It’s been a tough month for both landowners and the oil and gas corporations wanting to do business in New York. From the Chenango County Office Building in Norwich to the state’s capital in Albany, anti-drilling protesters have come out in droves to ride the wake of the senate’s moratorium and also to take credit for causing an U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hearing on the safety of hydraulic fracturing in nearby Binghamton to be postponed.
The federal study is being conducted along with New York’s own environmental review. (The latter is more than two years in the making and expected to be completed by year’s end.) And in Chenango County, activists are calling for the local government to join other counties that have already banned drilling until the EPA finishes, which some say could take from two to four years.
Chenango County Farm Bureau President Bradd Vickers, who has been an unbiased guest on many an educational seminar and radio broadcast held in New York this year, said he doesn’t want to think about how long it might take the EPA to decide whether hydraulic fracturing should be regulated by the federal government’s Safe Drinking Water Act rather than by state regulators.
“I hate to even think about it. It’s not just the farmers going under. At some point, you just have to move forward. ... You have to think about our local supply of food,” he said.
Vickers represents the sentiments of farmers on both sides of this issue and other issues that link energy and agriculture.
“You have environmentalists who want to get away from petroleum products, but don’t want wind generators on Long Island, or for farmers to sell their corn for ethanol instead of food. If not natural gas, so what’s the solution? Are we going to go back to the old high power line plans?” he asked in a reference to the New York Regional Interconnect high powered line that was proposed through Chenango County back in 2007.
“I hate to think of agriculture depending on income from natural gas, but for the economy in our area, that’s a potential loss.”
The president of the state’s largest pro-drill landowner coalition, which happens to be based in Norwich and Oxford, said many of the critiques on the horizontal drilling technique are caused by misinformation. The suggestion, for example, that drilling would create an industrial landscape that would deter hunting and fishing tourism, is inaccurate, Brian Conover said. One just has to try and search for the 15 wells already drilled in the Town of Smyrna to find out why.
“They’re all within a two-mile radius, but good luck even finding them. It’s not the size of a huge shopping mall like everyone is suggesting. They are so tiny that I could only find four of them,” Conover said.
“Look at the electrical wires that cut up the hills and the electrical plant on Hale Street in Norwich. This (natural gas drilling) is not the eyesore that we currently have in the countryside,” he added.
Conover agrees that the two sides combating each other aren’t on a level playing field monetarily. He said those against drilling are “extremely flexible, and have a lot of money to spread sensationalism and misinformation.”
Erin Heaton, a landowner in Norwich who is affiliated with drilling protesters, told Chenango County lawmakers this month that natural gas extraction “poses a very substantial risk to clean, safe drinking water.” She punctuated her request for a moratorium with reports of diesel spills at well sites, fracking chemical spills, well explosions and pipeline leaks reported in Pennsylvania and elsewhere where drilling for natural gas has been ongoing.
“In the rush to boost the county’s economic picture, let us not be the first to learn the tough lessons of natural gas extraction here in New York State. Instead, why not wait and be sure you can truly move ahead in a safe, responsible manner?” she suggested.
Peter Hudiburg of South Plymouth, who accompanied Heaton and others to meetings this month, said a worldwide shortage of potable water should be enough of a deterrent to hydraulic fracturing.
“The industry has revealed that 80,000 shale wells could be drilled and fracked in this region. If each were fracked with five million gallons of water, that would waste 400 billion gallons of water that will not and cannot be economically cleaned up in the future. And that is just for one fracking. Industry has been know to frack a single well up to 16 times,” he said.
Those calling for the local ban say company’s fracking chemical recipes contain toxins like benzene, that heavy metals brought forth in formation sediments are dangerously radioactive, and that piping and pipe junctions - whether plastic or metal - might fail as will the cement casings that enclose a well’s drill bores.
And they requested for more education.
Ken Fogerty from Guilford, a long time teacher and student, said education “allays fear and makes people more comfortable in their communities.” He suggested that the county create forums to educate farmers about renewable energy forms they could profit from besides leasing their natural gas reserves.
Chenango County Planner Rena Doing, who has assisted Chenango County’s Natural Gas Advisory Committee for the past two years as it has studied developments in the industry, told those attending a recent Planning Board meeting that she was frustrated with the process of educating:
“No matter how much we try to educate, a lot of legislators just aren’t educated,” she said.
Natural Gas Advisory Committee Chairman Peter C. Flanagan, who recently appeared as a guest with Vickers on a state broadcast radio show, told listeners that the Senate and Assembly were “ignorant” of the fracturing process. “They haven’t done their homework,” he said.
Chenango County’s Economic Development Consultant to the gas industry, Steven Palmatier, said he wished the state’s administration would make decisions based on science rather than fear caused by misinformation.
“We’ve been studying this for two years because drilling is already happening here. We’ve answered so many of anti-drillers’ questions because we’ve questioned them, too,” said Palmatier. Charged with developing economic development opportunities for businesses and jobs for the unemployed in Chenango County, Palmatier stated: “We’re ahead of the curve.”
Whether high volume hydraulic fracturing can take place without polluting New York’s water supplies and subsurface cannot be confirmed or denied by scientists because even they are human. According to Conover and Olivieri, one only has to look at the human error that resulted in NASA’s deadly space shuttle explosion, or more recently, British Petroleum’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
But, as they both stressed, no progress has been made without exploration at the sake of risk.
The hydraulic fracturing process creates fractures in shale formations that are very small, usually an 1/8th inch or less in width. Furthermore, Independent Oil and Gas Association news releases report that the separation between the fractures in the underlying rock and sources of potable water above is the equivalent of three-and-a-half Empire State Buildings. They say that between the two, there’s also millions of tons of solid, impermeable rock. And they repeatedly cite that of the 13,000 active wells in New York, not one has resulted in a single spill of fracturing fluids.
Olivieri: “I’m always very optimistic about everything. We have the largest reserves of natural gas underneath our feet in the Marcellus, but everything we read in the paper is always anti-drilling. There’s nothing left to do but stand up and become more vocal. The revenue it would generate for our area and the state would help us out a great deal.”
Anti-drillers launch more educational campaigns
A coalition of environmental and community groups have launched a new website to educate New Yorkers about the potential degradation of New York State’s water resources by natural gas development. The site, http://www.CleanWaterNotDirtyDrilling.org, is the work of Catskill Mountainkeeper, Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Earthjustice, EARTHWORKS, Environmental Advocates of New York, Natural Resources Defense Council, Riverkeeper, and Shaleshock.
The website asserts that three policy-related conditions must be met before drilling using high-volume hydraulic fracturing is considered for permitting in New York: solid scientific evidence on the impacts of the practice on water; strong rules and regulations that require drillers to not cut corners in protecting water and communities; and a sufficient number of qualified staff at the Department of Environmental Conservation to monitor all gas drilling operations and enforce rules and regulations.
The same groups have banded together to launch a series of billboards along Route 17 in the Catskills where drilling companies are clamoring for access to Marcellus shale gas reserves.
“That’s what it all boils down to. They, who for the most part come from downstate, have more money than we do up here, so they’re more powerful,” he said.
Olivieri’s exasperation was recently relayed in a phone call to The Evening Sun after the New York State Senate voted Aug. 3 to impose a nine-month moratorium on the controversial high water volume horizontal drilling technique, called hydraulic fracturing. The restaurant owner and real estate developer said he fears that the promise of economic recovery in the area and throughout upstate New York may now simply “wash downstate along with the region’s water.”
Referring to New York City-based protesters who want to ban drilling, he said, “They are the first to use our resources, our water and our crops, and not pay the adequate amount for it. Now they want to take our jobs away?”
It’s been a tough month for both landowners and the oil and gas corporations wanting to do business in New York. From the Chenango County Office Building in Norwich to the state’s capital in Albany, anti-drilling protesters have come out in droves to ride the wake of the senate’s moratorium and also to take credit for causing an U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hearing on the safety of hydraulic fracturing in nearby Binghamton to be postponed.
The federal study is being conducted along with New York’s own environmental review. (The latter is more than two years in the making and expected to be completed by year’s end.) And in Chenango County, activists are calling for the local government to join other counties that have already banned drilling until the EPA finishes, which some say could take from two to four years.
Chenango County Farm Bureau President Bradd Vickers, who has been an unbiased guest on many an educational seminar and radio broadcast held in New York this year, said he doesn’t want to think about how long it might take the EPA to decide whether hydraulic fracturing should be regulated by the federal government’s Safe Drinking Water Act rather than by state regulators.
“I hate to even think about it. It’s not just the farmers going under. At some point, you just have to move forward. ... You have to think about our local supply of food,” he said.
Vickers represents the sentiments of farmers on both sides of this issue and other issues that link energy and agriculture.
“You have environmentalists who want to get away from petroleum products, but don’t want wind generators on Long Island, or for farmers to sell their corn for ethanol instead of food. If not natural gas, so what’s the solution? Are we going to go back to the old high power line plans?” he asked in a reference to the New York Regional Interconnect high powered line that was proposed through Chenango County back in 2007.
“I hate to think of agriculture depending on income from natural gas, but for the economy in our area, that’s a potential loss.”
The president of the state’s largest pro-drill landowner coalition, which happens to be based in Norwich and Oxford, said many of the critiques on the horizontal drilling technique are caused by misinformation. The suggestion, for example, that drilling would create an industrial landscape that would deter hunting and fishing tourism, is inaccurate, Brian Conover said. One just has to try and search for the 15 wells already drilled in the Town of Smyrna to find out why.
“They’re all within a two-mile radius, but good luck even finding them. It’s not the size of a huge shopping mall like everyone is suggesting. They are so tiny that I could only find four of them,” Conover said.
“Look at the electrical wires that cut up the hills and the electrical plant on Hale Street in Norwich. This (natural gas drilling) is not the eyesore that we currently have in the countryside,” he added.
Conover agrees that the two sides combating each other aren’t on a level playing field monetarily. He said those against drilling are “extremely flexible, and have a lot of money to spread sensationalism and misinformation.”
Erin Heaton, a landowner in Norwich who is affiliated with drilling protesters, told Chenango County lawmakers this month that natural gas extraction “poses a very substantial risk to clean, safe drinking water.” She punctuated her request for a moratorium with reports of diesel spills at well sites, fracking chemical spills, well explosions and pipeline leaks reported in Pennsylvania and elsewhere where drilling for natural gas has been ongoing.
“In the rush to boost the county’s economic picture, let us not be the first to learn the tough lessons of natural gas extraction here in New York State. Instead, why not wait and be sure you can truly move ahead in a safe, responsible manner?” she suggested.
Peter Hudiburg of South Plymouth, who accompanied Heaton and others to meetings this month, said a worldwide shortage of potable water should be enough of a deterrent to hydraulic fracturing.
“The industry has revealed that 80,000 shale wells could be drilled and fracked in this region. If each were fracked with five million gallons of water, that would waste 400 billion gallons of water that will not and cannot be economically cleaned up in the future. And that is just for one fracking. Industry has been know to frack a single well up to 16 times,” he said.
Those calling for the local ban say company’s fracking chemical recipes contain toxins like benzene, that heavy metals brought forth in formation sediments are dangerously radioactive, and that piping and pipe junctions - whether plastic or metal - might fail as will the cement casings that enclose a well’s drill bores.
And they requested for more education.
Ken Fogerty from Guilford, a long time teacher and student, said education “allays fear and makes people more comfortable in their communities.” He suggested that the county create forums to educate farmers about renewable energy forms they could profit from besides leasing their natural gas reserves.
Chenango County Planner Rena Doing, who has assisted Chenango County’s Natural Gas Advisory Committee for the past two years as it has studied developments in the industry, told those attending a recent Planning Board meeting that she was frustrated with the process of educating:
“No matter how much we try to educate, a lot of legislators just aren’t educated,” she said.
Natural Gas Advisory Committee Chairman Peter C. Flanagan, who recently appeared as a guest with Vickers on a state broadcast radio show, told listeners that the Senate and Assembly were “ignorant” of the fracturing process. “They haven’t done their homework,” he said.
Chenango County’s Economic Development Consultant to the gas industry, Steven Palmatier, said he wished the state’s administration would make decisions based on science rather than fear caused by misinformation.
“We’ve been studying this for two years because drilling is already happening here. We’ve answered so many of anti-drillers’ questions because we’ve questioned them, too,” said Palmatier. Charged with developing economic development opportunities for businesses and jobs for the unemployed in Chenango County, Palmatier stated: “We’re ahead of the curve.”
Whether high volume hydraulic fracturing can take place without polluting New York’s water supplies and subsurface cannot be confirmed or denied by scientists because even they are human. According to Conover and Olivieri, one only has to look at the human error that resulted in NASA’s deadly space shuttle explosion, or more recently, British Petroleum’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
But, as they both stressed, no progress has been made without exploration at the sake of risk.
The hydraulic fracturing process creates fractures in shale formations that are very small, usually an 1/8th inch or less in width. Furthermore, Independent Oil and Gas Association news releases report that the separation between the fractures in the underlying rock and sources of potable water above is the equivalent of three-and-a-half Empire State Buildings. They say that between the two, there’s also millions of tons of solid, impermeable rock. And they repeatedly cite that of the 13,000 active wells in New York, not one has resulted in a single spill of fracturing fluids.
Olivieri: “I’m always very optimistic about everything. We have the largest reserves of natural gas underneath our feet in the Marcellus, but everything we read in the paper is always anti-drilling. There’s nothing left to do but stand up and become more vocal. The revenue it would generate for our area and the state would help us out a great deal.”
Anti-drillers launch more educational campaigns
A coalition of environmental and community groups have launched a new website to educate New Yorkers about the potential degradation of New York State’s water resources by natural gas development. The site, http://www.CleanWaterNotDirtyDrilling.org, is the work of Catskill Mountainkeeper, Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Earthjustice, EARTHWORKS, Environmental Advocates of New York, Natural Resources Defense Council, Riverkeeper, and Shaleshock.
The website asserts that three policy-related conditions must be met before drilling using high-volume hydraulic fracturing is considered for permitting in New York: solid scientific evidence on the impacts of the practice on water; strong rules and regulations that require drillers to not cut corners in protecting water and communities; and a sufficient number of qualified staff at the Department of Environmental Conservation to monitor all gas drilling operations and enforce rules and regulations.
The same groups have banded together to launch a series of billboards along Route 17 in the Catskills where drilling companies are clamoring for access to Marcellus shale gas reserves.
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