GUILFORD – A Guilford man went without food for a week in protest over his First Amendment rights.

Retired Chenango County mental health professional Patrick McElligott said he wanted to speak to New York Senator Thomas Libous, 52nd District, about how hydraulic fracturing for natural gas contaminates water, and began phoning in November to request such a meeting. The deputy majority leader of the state Senate advocates for safe drilling.

When McElligott’s messages weren’t answered, he later wrote to the Senator, stating he would go on a hunger strike if Libous refused to meet with him. McElligott outlined his volunteer involvement in getting industrial waste dump sites in nearby Sidney Center cleaned, and pointed to similar toxic materials that would be used in the process that pressures chemicals and large quantities of water through wells to release gas from subterranean shale deposits.

“Amendment 1 gives us the right, and really the responsibility, to express your opinion to government officials, and they, in turn, in my view of it, need to be the recipients. Government is supposed to work like that,” McElligott said yesterday.

In a return letter, Libous assumed McElligott wanted to change his opinion on the issue of hydraulic fracturing, and said neither a meeting nor his threat of a hunger strike would do it. “While I respect your passionate feelings,” Libous wrote, “your plan to go on a hunger strike won’t change my mind, either.”