Front page story of The Evening Sun in Norwich, NY 05-31-12:
http://www.evesun.com/news/stories/2012-05-31/14952/Pro-gas-coalition-requests-countys-backing/
Pro-gas coalition requests county’s backing
By: Melissa deCordova, Sun Staff Writer
Published: May 31st, 2012
More than 400,000 acres in Chenango County is either leased for natural gas development, waiting to be leased as part the Central New York Landowner’s Coalition or New York State Land that is presumed to be for responsible drilling, says Coalition President Brian Conover. A map depicting the large blocks of land was shared with members of the Natural Gas Advisory Committee Tuesday.
NORWICH – An advisory committee on natural gas development in
Chenango County took no action Tuesday on a request to officially
endorse the findings of New York’s updated permitting rules and to
discourage municipal moratoriums on drilling from superceding them.
Armed with a map showing that the majority of the county’s landowners
are in favor of responsible gas development, Central New York Landowners
Coalition President Brian Conover asked for the committee to support
its members.
“The overwhelming majority of this county is in the coalition or leased.
Our responsibility is to our landowners. We should be at the forefront
of this train rather than its caboose,” he said, referring to the
permitting process once it begins.
Environmental regulators have been compiling and composing safe drilling
procedures since 2008 when concerns were raised about high-volume
hydraulic fracturing, the method which made it economically feasible to
extract oil and gas from the Marcellus Shale.
Fracking, as it’s called,
unlocks trapped gas by injecting a well with millions of gallons of
highly pressurized water mixed with a solution of soap, sand and
chemicals that some worry has the potential to contaminate drinking
water.
“I would rather do so after the SGEIS is finished,” Chenango County
Natural Gas Advisory Committee Chairman Peter C. Flanagan, D-Preston,
said, referring to the 900-page document that is anticipated sometime
this year.
The committee serves in an advisory role for the county and can
recommend resolutions. Instead of backing the coalition’s request,
Flanagan suggested the proposed resolution be distributed to the
county’s 23 town and City of Norwich supervisors for their individual
consideration. He said he would inform the county board and take the
resolution to his own town board.
There are no official bans on drilling in Chenango County, but several
townships are considering joining a long list of New York municipalities
that have taken Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner
Joseph Martens at his word when he said in April that communities
identified as anti-drilling wouldn’t be subject to the gas-extraction
process. The nearby towns of Butternuts and Middlefield in Otsego County
and Dryden in Tompkins County have imposed bans, the latter being in
the midst of defending their actions in the courts against law suits
filed by gas and oil companies and landowners.
“New York State and the DEC do not appear to have a spine. They are capitulating to local sentiment,” Conover said. “Too much is at stake for us. This is an opportunity for our towns to say we already have development here, when the DEC document comes out, then we an say we’re ready to go.”
Anti-drilling sentiment forming
Anti-drilling sentiment is forming in the towns of Plymouth, Smithville, McDonough and German. Road use regulations are in place in Columbus and have been hotly debated in Afton.Potential pipeline routes met with opposition in Coventry and nearby Sidney.
The Town of Guilford is in the midst of writing a comprehensive plan that would give it zoning rights when it comes to regulating land use within its borders. Most Chenango County municipalities do not have zoning, something necessary to
enforce bans.
In German, a constituent with expertise in the health field has proposed a resolution before his board stipulating that the town would require only non-frack solutions be employed when drilling. Some companies are employing petroleum, recycled waste water or other chemical-free methods to open tight shale fissures and capture the gas.
Supervisor Richard Schlag,D-German, said his town lacked the financial strength to fight any lawsuits that might come with an outright moratorium, so had decided
to move forward with a resolution.
“Martens (DEC Commissioner) said towns that pass resolutions, to DEC say, in our case, that when you permit wells in German, take the will of the community in mind, and don’t,” Schlag, who is a member of the Natural Gas Advisory Committee, said Tuesday.
There are currently three Norse Energy horizontal, Utica well permit applications filed with the DEC in the Town of German.
Chenango County has between 10 and 20 permit applications waiting that would continue natural gas development first begun here in 2005. Norse Energy, the county’s primary natural gas developer, is currently in maintenance mode on 34 wells, many of which are producing. According to a report from the Chenango County Real Property Tax Department, natural gas production in Chenango Countywas taxed for a grand total of $657,141 last year, the majority, or 52.16 percent, of which was paid to the Sherburne-Earlville, Norwich and Otselic Valley school districts. The remainder was shared by the county, towns and fire districts.
An end to the moratorium would spur over $11.4 billion in economic output forNew York State, a numberput forth in a 2011 article inthe Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
Will bans hold up?
Chenango County Planning Department Director Donna Jones told the committee that
she began to research state law when natural gas opponents from Butternuts began pressuring landowners in Guilford to impose a ban in their town. Saying she didn’t want towns to be sued, Jones began researching General Municipal Law 239 - a required referral/review activity that county planning boards must undertake before local governments take final action on certain local planning and zoning matters. In doing so, Jones discovered New York Laws 264 and 265 that appeared to make the Butternut’s ban illegal.
“Those laws should have required Butternuts to notify neighboring towns of the public hearing on their ban. Chenango County wasn’t notified,” she said, adding that a representative from the Department of State has since confirmed her claim.
Supervisor Flanagan sup-ported Jones, saying he called the towns of Virgil and Harford in Cortland County and learned that they weren’t notified of Dryden’s ban in adjacent
Tompkins County, either. The laws make such moratoriums illegal, he said, and legal opin-ion is that they may have to be started all over again.
“Those of you who adjoin those towns with bans - New Berlin, Norwich, German -you might hear about this,” Flanagan said to his 12-member committee. “I expect this to be hot concern coming up.”
NY Law 265 permits changes to land use regs if made by 20 percent or more of the area of land immediately adjacent to that land included in such proposed change. Conover said the implications of this on existing bans was “huge.”
“We have more than 20 percent of the land in every township represented in our coalition. It’s laughable (to think that petitions for local bans are supported by the
majority).”
Landowners Coalition has confidence in DEC
The CNYLC delivered 6,000 supportive statementto the DEC for the SGEIS. Conover
said he has confidence that the state will develop a program that allows development of our natural gas resources to proceed in a safe, responsible and competitive manner.
“Our major consideration are the farmers, the people who own the land, maintain the land, have had it in their families and are the true environmentalists. Our farmers and landowners
deserve it,” he said.
In McDonough last Saturday, Conover addressed a group of about 20 anti-drilling activists, saying the correlative rights of all town residents - those for and against natural gas development - can be achieved; that the state has the upper hand over towns in the development of oil, gas and solution mining; and that the DEC have done their homework and are the experts.
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