Tompkins County Council of Governments Sponsors Public Hearing on Proposed DEC Gas Drilling Rules

Thursday, December 1, 2011 from 7:00 - 11:00 p.m. at The State Theatre, 107 West State Street Ithaca, NY 14850

Facebook event https://www.facebook.com/events/307558602595965/

ITHACA - The Tompkins County Council of Governments, TCCOG, announces that it is sponsoring a public hearing on Thursday, December 1st to provide citizens an opportunity to comment on the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (dSGEIS) on the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining and regulations that will govern high-volume hydraulic fracturing.

The hearing will be held from 7-11 p.m. in ITHACA’s State Theatre, adjacent to the downtown Ithaca Commons. The proceedings will be transcribed by a professional court stenographer. At the hearing, TCCOG will accept both written and oral testimony and present the comments to the DEC prior to the December 12th comment deadline.

TCCOG Co-Chair Don Barber said ,“TCCOG’s mission for this public hearing is to provide a local venue for citizens to voice their opinions about the Department of Environmental Conservation’s 2011 revised Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) as it pertains to high volume hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica shales”.

According to Martha Robertson, Chair of Tompkins County Legislature, the Tompkins County Council of Governments supports open and transparent government processes and so is proud to sponsor this hearing. While the DEC has scheduled public hearings in other parts of the State, there are none within the Finger Lakes Region. To facilitate participation in the comment process, the TCCOG hearing is for citizens within Tompkins County, the Finger Lakes Region and beyond, to make comments on the dSGEIS.

Caroline Town Councilman Dominic Frongillo will moderate the hearing. Doors will open at 6:30 pm. Anyone wishing to make oral comments must register on a sign-in sheet that will be available at the hearing. Forms will be provided for written comments. People are welcome to come with comments already prepared. This hearing will follow the same format as others held by the DEC, with oral presentations limited to three minutes and speakers presenting in the order registered, as time permits. Those wishing to make comments will be asked to focus their comments specifically on the contents of the draft SGEIS, rather than general statements for or against gas drilling.

The dSGEIS can be viewed at http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/75370.html and the proposed regulations at http://www.dec.ny.gov/regulations/77353.html. A paper copy is available for review at the Tompkins County Public Library.

For questions, please contact: Michelle Pottorff at (607) 274-5434
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This report was from the Cornell Environmental Law Society’s 2011 Energy Conference earlier in 2011 where I was a volunteer for the weekend. Susan Christopherson, the opening keynote from the conference, and her team have completed the attached study on the economic consequences of shale gas extraction. This information was kindly forwarded to me from Ben Tettlebaum, Chair of the Environmental Law Society at Cornell Law School. -Mike

MESSAGE FROM SUSAN CHRISTOPHERSON

Attached you will find a Summary Report on The Economic Consequences of Marcellus Shale Gas Extraction, outlining some of the key issues explored by a team of researchers centered at Cornell University during the period of New York’s moratorium on high volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) for natural gas.  Our research focused on Pennsylvania, where Marcellus HVHF drilling has already begun, and on New York, which is still considering how to regulate HVHF, but we also made use of the experience of other states that have shale gas plays where HVHF has been in use far longer than in Pennsylvania. [ attachment stashed here http://canaaninstitute.org/docs/CaRDI%20Report.pdf ]

At 17 pages, this report is a series of snapshots about what we found.  For a more fulsome account of our analysis and findings on most of these issues, we encourage you to read the complete working papers and policy briefs we have made available for download at: http://www.greenchoices.cornell.edu/development/marcellus/policy.cfm.

We launched this research project because it had become evident that the public and policy discussion over the consequences of Marcellus shale gas extraction had devolved to a polarized debate contrasting potential effects on water supplies with potential economic benefits.  The consequences for water resources were (and are) receiving a great deal of attention; the economic consequences were not.  We did not begin with a disposition for or against shale gas extraction, but we wanted to develop a realistic picture about what to expect, and about the economic consequences both in the short term and in the longer term.

As you will see in the accompanying report, the consequences that should concern us all go well beyond environmental concerns, and their economic implications include costs as well as benefits.  On balance, is shale gas extraction likely to be an economic winner? Not necessarily.  We conclude that while there are real economic benefits for some parties, if shale gas extraction is to be at all a positive force for economic development broadly and long term, it will require intensive planning and a new structure of regulation, monitoring and enforcement – along with the means to pay for it – that are not currently in place.

That is why it is important that the issues identified here become a part of the discussions and actions demanded of government at the state and local level now, before it is too late.  To that end, we urge your help, and we encourage your dissemination of this report to whomever it might prove useful.

Susan Christopherson
Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, Cornell University
Principal Investigator

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