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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Tuesday, 29. November 2011
Hydrofracking in shale is a risk to our rare clean water supply. Only those who can benefit economically want to take that risk. How can we be assured that there will be no mitigation when three inches of concrete needs to go down more than a mile and then across for miles. There is no technology to see that is sealed, and there are openings for the gas as well which prevent a seal. This is a gamble and the stakes could not be higher. The geologists agree upon this. Greedy or impoverished people are behind the push for potentially destroying the one critical resource we must protect: life giving water. It can not be cleaned up. Nor can long-term health risks like cancer be seen today. I already have a low supply of water, and live next to huge areas of leased land. I am preparing to move before my home of twenty-five years loses all value. The disruption in my life is immense, but to our whole Finger Lakes region and country, the potential for a real catastrophe is totally unnerving. I have been fighting it for years now, despise certain neighbors, and spend a lot of time going door to door to have a petition signed vs. fracking in Newfield. How can it be banned in NYC and Syracuse, and possibly the whole Delaware water basin and not here?
Tuesday, 10. January 2012
Gas Drill Comments LAST CHANCE! Written comment deadline EXTENDED to: January 11, 2012 - My friend Anne Stork has put together a nice summary table of comments from folks in the Town of Danby’s gas drilling task force. The comments are short and organized alphabetically plus she’s added a column as to which online category each comment fits into. Here is Anne’s document http://canaaninstitute.org/docs/DANBY_SGEIS_Table_Responses.doc You can use these as basis for comment ideas or just copy/paste them! Here is the DEC url http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/76838.html Also from Anne: Hinchey has just sent a letter that folks could copy too if they are up for sending a letter: http://hinchey.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1808&Itemid=120