NORWICH – The tone teetered back and forth between anti and pro drilling sentiments Thursday night at an informational forum on the economic impacts of natural gas drilling.
Approximately 130 people filled the sanctuary of the United Church of Christ in Norwich for the event. It was the fourth in a series of free, public forums sponsored by Chenango Community Action For Renewable Energy, a community education group that aims to explore a full range of energy sources, not just natural gas.
Despite a couple of outbursts from the audience, the presentation and question and answer session was, for the most part, civil. Media reports had warned of the opposite. Rev. Joseph Connolly called for “a respectful and responsible” exchange at the forum’s onset.
Panelist Nicole Dillingham, a Cooperstown-based attorney, delved into a powerpoint presentation that refuted her “favorite myths” about high water volume hydraulic fracturing, the highly-contested method needed to release natural gas from the Marcellus and other shale formations. Dillingham said the debate was not a Liberal versus a Conservative issue, but a matter of “stealing your children’s future.”
“The gas is not going to go away. Don’t exploit it now, there’s no hurry. The truly patriotic activity would be to preserve it for our future resource needs,” she said, contesting that shale gas developed today in Pennsylvania and elsewhere was being shipped overseas and would not be used domestically.
The hydraulic fracturing process in drilling for shale gas forces a highly-pressurized mixture of water, soap, sand and some chemicals through a well bore reaching more than a mile below the subsurface. The types and quantities of chemicals used in the mixture, the amount of radium and other heavy metals released from underground and whether toxic elements end up in the water table has become a matter of national debate. Well workers have suffered injuries and even death from drilling-related accidents and residents have complained about methane in their drinking water and health issues associated with air and water pollution. Energy companies and state environmental authorities say the process can be safely regulated.
Dillingham said proponents of the oil and gas industry have misled the population into thinking that no incidents of contamination have been attributed to gas drilling; that government agencies will protect us; that formation and fracturing wastewater can be treated safely; and that local governments need merely rely on the state to protect their infrastructure.
“The myth that local governments are powerless, that the state is in charge, is perhaps the most misleading,” she said.
In neighboring Otsego County, Dillingham said 85 percent of the businesses polled are opposed to drilling until the federal Environmental Protection Agency decides whether it should be regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act. Brewery Ommegang, the Otsego Chamber of Commerce and M.I. Bassett Hospital are leading the effort, she said.
“The momentum is building and organizers on every level of every town in the county will make a difference on this issue in the Otsego County elections this fall,” she said.
The energy industry’s claim that no drilling-related accidents had occurred in New York State is a matter of semantics, according to the attorney. “There was nothing claimed, nothing documented ... because the DEC wasn’t regulated to perform any remediation at that time,’” she said. Dillingham referred to a list of 260 complaints about improper vertical drilling, blown out casings and surface spills that were found by an Ithaca-based researcher, Walter Hang, president of Toxins Targeting.
“This is fraud on the public,” she said. “I hope our state is aware of that.”
As for relying on the government or the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, one need only look at their financial condition, she said. “New York and the federal government are bankrupt. ... To assume that our government will somehow protect us is somewhat foolhardy.”
Dr. Jannette Barth, an economist from Croton-on-Hudson, added her own myth to her counterpart’s list. She kicked of her portion of the forum by opposing the idea that natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel source than oil or coal.
“Not from cradle to grave it’s not ... if you look at the cost for land, stream and air pollution ... and some of the medical illness caused by exposure to benzene, like bladder cancer, it’s not,” she said. (Diesel fuel, which in contains the carcinogen benzene, has been used in hydraulic fracturing and is also a naturally occurring underground carcinogen.)
Barth refuted information contained within a handful of studies that indicate more jobs, more income and a better economy as the result of drilling. She said the studies she reviewed ignored significant costs, weren’t applicable to the Marcellus Shale region in Pennsylvania and New York, and were primarily funded by the oil and gas industry, and thus couldn’t be trusted.
She said full-blown drilling in New York, that some say could place a dozen well heads on every square mile of land, would drive the local populace and existing businesses and industries out of the area. Home values would drop, land prices soar and rents rise out of reach except for the industries’ work force. Governments would be hit with the costs to remediate stream and air pollution long after the gas businesses are gone, she said.
The economist pointed to limited employee and wage opportunities and a limited multiplier affect of future jobs and ancillary businesses. “Drilling is capital intensive, not employee intensive,” Barth said, estimating that every dollar paid by the gas industry would generate only $1.40.
The energy industry’s estimates regarding production numbers per well, the life span of a well and the number of jobs created are also exaggerated, she said. Instead of economic development, Barth said communities should expect damaged roads, fewer tourists, vacant store fronts, lost farm land, and increased police forces to deal with crime and drug abuse from transient workers.
And, according to her review of existing studies, the idea that farmers who experience windfalls would stay local and improve their farms is “too uncertain to statistically rely on.” Barth used the same criteria for local municipal and school leadership also, saying they will overspend and over build, and then when populations decline, they will not be able to maintain those levels of services.
Citing a study of 10 gas producing counties in New York from 2006 to 2008, boom and bust is what residents can expect, she said, “Those economies that rely on mineral development face instability and are not better off than on-gas drilling counties. The only parties likely to benefit are the gas companies and a few lucky landowners.”
Several members from the audience, both pro and against drilling, had an opportunity to ask questions at the culmination of the presentations. Third generation dairy farmer Barbara Dulkis of Maryland, NY was one of them. She challenged the Otsego County business study both panelists referenced, saying the results were based on only 65 responses.
“Eighty-five percent of 65 businesses that returned the poll isn’t that many,” she said.
While Dillingham acknowledged that Dulkis’ numbers were true, she said the study’s response rate was considered good.
Dulkis also took offense to Barth’s suggestion that farmers will take the money from royalties on their wells and leave the area and that communities would trade farming and tourism for high rentals, transient workers and drug abuse.
“Has anybody spoken to farmers? This is all so one-sided. I’m telling my college-aged children that there’s nothing left in farming now. We cannot continue at it is,” she said. “And to blame those ills on one industry means you haven’t read the papers. High rentals, drug use, crime... it’s already here.”
Edward Allees of Jeffersonville in Sullivan County challenged the speakers’ boom and bust theory. “Where is the bust if homes are improved, which of course is long-lasting, and if county taxes are paid?” he asked.
Norse Energy Inc. spokesman Scott Ives said Barth’s calculations didn’t take into account the revenues that would be generated by real property taxes paid by gas companies to towns, counties and school districts.
Susan Dorsey, a member of the Central New York Landowners Coalition, said Barth’s economic impact analysis was based on conclusions drawn from existing studies, not her own.
“To admit that she didn’t do a study pretty much sums up the due diligence devoted to telling local populace across 17 Southern Tier counties what they should and shouldn't do with their futures. For their own good, of course, as stated by the doctor,” she said.
C-CARE president Ken Fogerty said his group is “quite sympathetic” to the pressures that farmers are under and “respects the rights of landowners” to do what they want with their property.
The problem, he said, is when that negatively impacts neighbors.
“We would ask everyone to look at the issue of forcible integration, which is gas companies taking a landowner’s rights through compulsory integration. We should fight that one together.”
Fogerty said his group had “learned enough” to determine that high water volume horizontal natural gas drilling “is not safe at the present time.”
Steven Palmatier, Chenango County’s natural gas industry consultant for economic development, invited the two speakers to accompany him on a tour of local businesses that had profited already from natural gas drilling.