Countdown Contributor Mark Ruffalo on Fracking | Countdown with Keith Olbermann
July 14, 2011
Countdown Contributor Mark Ruffalo on Fracking | Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
Drilling & the DEC: Responding to New Guidelines Ithaca July 25th
July 14, 2011
Drilling & the DEC: Responding to New Guidelines
Experts will speak out on DEC’s revised draft SGEIS at free, public forum in Ithaca.
Monday, July 25, doors open at 6:30; presentations start at 7:00
Women’s Community Building, 100 W. Seneca Street, Ithaca, NY
Speakers:
Louis Allstadt, Former Executive Vice President, Mobil Oil Corporation
Tony Ingraffea, Ph.D., Dwight C. Baum Professor of Engineering at Cornell University
Helen Slottje, Managing Attorney, Community Environmental Defense Council
Roger Downs, Conservation Director, Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club
Karen Edelstein, GIS and Mapping Consultant
Martha Robertson, Chair of the Tompkins County Legislature, will introduce and moderate the event.
One of the key questions to be considered by the presenters will be how the newly revised SGEIS differs from the one released and widely decried nearly two years ago. During that time, much more has been learned about hydrofracking as it is conducted in other states, especially in neighboring Pennsylvania. Significant new restrictions and protections have been written in the new revised draft, using problems in Pennsylvania as lessons. Those who attend the event will learn what’s better about this draft, what concerns remain, and what are some recommendations for the DEC.
Attendees will be encouraged to submit comments on the newly revised SGEIS to the DEC. Template comment letters, addresses, and online links will be provided to participants and made available widely afterwards.
A second public forum will be held in Ithaca in early fall to address the community, social and economic impacts section of the SGEIS. This final section of the SGEIS will be released to the public in August. All public comments on the SGEIS, parts 1 and 2, will be due to DEC on or about October 1.
This event will be videotaped and available through the internet at www.shaleshockmedia.org several days following the meeting.
The forum is sponsored by numerous local organizations including:
Shaleshock Action Alliance
ROUSE (Residents Opposing Unsafe Shale-gas Extraction)
DRAC (Dryden Resource Awareness Coalition)
Cayuga Lake Watershed Network
Social Justice Committee, First Unitarian Church of Ithaca
Brewery Ommegang and the Business Coalition
ENSAW (Enfield Neighbors for Safe Air and Water)
Otsego 2000
GDACC (Gas Drilling Awareness for Cortland County)
Keuka Citizens Against Hydrofracking
Concerned Citizens of Ulysses
Danby Gas Drilling Task Force
League of Women Voters of Tompkins County
Sustainable Tompkins
CPFL (Committee to Preserve the Finger Lakes)
C-CARE (Chenango Community Action for Renewable Energy)
People for a Healthy Environment
PAUSE (Promoting Alternatives to Unsafe Sources of Energy)
Committee on Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation, Ithaca First Presbyterian Church
Tompkins County Council of Governments Task Force on Gas Drilling
For more information contact Martha Robertson: mrob@twcny.rr.com,
Hilary Lambert: hilary_lambert@yahoo.com, Sara Hess: sarahess63@yahoo.com.
ALEC Exposed – Alec Exposed
July 13, 2011
Corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politicians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights. These so-called “model bills” reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations. Through ALEC, corporations have “a VOICE and a VOTE” on specific changes to the law that are then proposed in your state. DO YOU?
Karl Klein — op.ed
July 12, 2011
Karl Klein
4648 N Tower Rd.
Cincinnatus, NY 13040
Editor, Cortland Standard
Cortland, NY 13045
July 12, 2011
Dear Editor –
I am writing in response to the article about the disappointed landowners in regards to the DEC release of the draft hydrofracking standards.
I sympathize with the landowners who feel that their rights to their property have been violated. Private property rights are an important part of our society. Most of us don’t like being told what we can, or cannot do, with our property. However, I would like to ask your readers to consider the same private property rights issue from a different perspective.
When NYS passed the Compulsory Integration aspect of the existing gas extraction rules, they effectively violated my right to control the mineral rights under my property. When enough landowners in any given area sell their mineral rights (in this gas – natural gas), the industry is free to tunnel under my property using horizontal drilling and take my gas. It doesn’t matter if I want to sell this legacy now (with record low prices for natural gas) or want to wait till the price rises – which it surely will. Or, if I simply prefer to leave this legacy to my heirs, the law makes it impossible for me to protect my property.
The landowners cited in the article will have, in effect, (with today’s low prices) forced me to put my well water at risk and also potentially required me to put up with the hundreds, if not thousands, of massive trucks, tankers, earthmovers, and compressor stations that will be needed to extract and export the “fracked” gas from our rural area. Make no mistake, hydraulic fracturing is an industrial process. It is not the relatively benign operation used in the old gas wells that already dot the landscape.
Even though many landowners claim to be the aggrieved parties, most of them have received some money (in some cases thousands and thousands of dollars) – even though no drilling has yet taken place. So, it is really hard for me to feel very sorry for them having received this “free money.” To me, living in rural Cortland County is about the lifestyle, peace and quiet, and clean air and water. These things are far more important to me than the money I might get from a questionable gas extraction industrial operation. In this case, I believe my right to these things trumps the rights of my neighbors enable the burrowing under my land to take my property.
In educating myself on this issue, there seem to be a great many questions about the overall safety of the fracking industrial process. I think perhaps it CAN be done safely, but the record of the gas industry shows that it doesn’t always do so. Until they show that they can, let’s just put this process on hold and leave the gas where it is. They cover up their mistakes by settling with injured parties and requiring them to sign non-disclosure agreements that keep their errors and mistakes quiet and not part of the public record.
Let’s not risk what have right now for what might possibly be a short-term bonanza (which includes the arrival of out-of-state “roughnecks”, associated increased demands for social services, law enforcement, decreased real estate values, road damage, and air and water pollution).
Respectfully submitted,
Karl Klein
Solon, NY
