NORWICH – The director of Chenango County Soil and Water Conservation staked out a claim with members of the Finance Committee to maintain his budget and keep funding for his staff next year.
“I have a very small staff and I lose a lot of sleep because I’m worried about keeping them,” said the department’s director, Lance Lockwood. County departments have just begun the process of budgeting for next year.
Local taxpayers support the Conservation department’s budget in total, which is $148,690 this year. Lockwood projected a zero increase in expenses. He said his department had been working diligently to bring every farm up to speed with water quality-based mandates and estimated it would take another year to do so.
In addition, because it is a non-regulatory agency, Lockwood said Soil and Water Conservation has fielded numerous questions over the past two years from farmers, energy companies and lawyers regarding natural gas wells and pipeline infrastructure.
“Gas companies see us as the go between them and the public. And the DEC has pawned off gravel beds, streams, storm water run off and field monitoring duties to us. They don’t have the staff,” he said.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is required to send field inspectors to monitor well pad sites and drilling operations. The agency is expected to release new specs for monitoring hydraulic fracturing in shales formations in December, and if development takes off, many critics say there won’t be enough DEC inspectors to do the required work.
Lockwood said the DEC would be “counting on” his department for erosion and sediment control, among other water and soil related assignments. “We would hope to be clearing house for problems in the future by knowing how the soil and water is now,” he said.
Finance Committee Chairman Lawrence Wilcox thanked Lockwood for the “heads up” and commented, “It would be better to have Chenango County people doing the work rather than another regulating agency.”