NORWICH – A petition containing more than 3,000 signatures and asking for a moratorium on natural gas drilling in the Afton, Coventry and Bainbridge areas was delivered to the Chenango County Board of Supervisors this month.
County resident Kim Michels circulated the petition and presented it to Clerk of the Board RC Woodford, who entered the document as a matter of public record.
According to Woodford, the individuals who signed hail primarily from the Southern Tier, but also come from as far away as New Jersey, Pulaski and Roscoe.
The petition asked signers to agree that gas drilling should be prohibited primarily due to “the great harm it would cause to our environment, our health and our property,” and to protest gas leases that were allegedly obtained “by the gas companies’ dishonesty, either by telling lies, lies by omission, deceit and/or coercion to get people to sign contracts.”
“We hope that our government will do the right thing and protect our land and us and not succumb to greed at our expense,” the petition reads.
The document is the latest in a long string of visits and letters to the county’s board (and letters to The Evening Sun editor) over the past few months from citizens opposed to hydraulic fracturing. The horizontal drilling technique is used to extract natural gas from the Marcellus and other shale formations found within the Appalachian River Basin states of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York.
Multinational energy companies are currently building their holdings of mineral rights in those states, and have been fracturing, producing natural gas and developing pipeline infrastructure since 2008. Chevron Corp. announced a week ago that it would acquire Atlas Energy, and its extensive Marcellus holdings, for $4.3 billion. The acquisition in similar in stature to Exxon Mobil Corp.'s $41 billion deal to buy XTO Energy a year ago.
New York State is set to release its environmental impact study on shale gas drilling early next year, a move that would permit shale drilling after a two-year moratorium.
According to Chenango County’ director of Cornell Cooperative Extension, Ken Smith, a rough calculation shows about $30 billion worth of extractable gas lies under Chenango County alone, in both shales and sandstone formations. The Norwegian energy company, Norse Energy, Inc., is producing gas from 36 vertical sandstone wells in Chenango County and owns about 180,000 acres of mineral rights in Central New York. The company does not employ hydraulic fracturing.
Opponents to drilling say the fracking fluids used to fissure the shale and the formation water brought back up through the wells have and will continue to pollute the water acquirer. Proponents say accidental surface spills and private water well contamination reports in Dimock, Pa. and elsewhere are unrelated to hydraulic fracturing. The federal Environmental Protection Agency is currently asking energy companies to disclose the make-up of their particular mix of water, chemicals, soap and sand.
In an letter accompanying the petition, Michels writes that Chenango County’s natural gas advisor has a “conflict of interest issue and, as such, is very likely providing you (the board) with a very biased, pro-drilling point of view upon which you are basing your decisions regarding drilling our county.”
Last year, the county board chairman elected to appoint a consultant to develop business and economic opportunities within the natural gas industry that was already underway in Chenango County. An independent ethics committee considered the recommended consultant, Preston businessman Steven Palmatier, and after a lengthy review, he was hired. Palmatier continues in that role currently.
Also at the board’s meeting last week, a representative of a group called Chenango Community Action for Renewable Energy, or CCARE, invited legislators to attend a public forum on natural gas drilling scheduled in Norwich on Thursday.