Comment Period on Natural Gas Drilling Closing Soon
by Florence and John Carnahan
This past week my husband and I attended a meeting near Syracuse concerning natural gas drilling in New York State. Speakers noted there are very few days left to send a comment to the Department of Environmental Conservation regarding the issue of natural gas drilling. The deadline for comment is December 31, 2009.
To see how it is already impacting our communities, see the map of current leases.
Information on high-volume hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling procedures for the Marcellus and Utica black shales can be found at Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement (DGEIS). This gives a background on the document and tells how to make a comment. The DGEIS is an overwhelming 809 pages but you can search the document for information that may be relevant or read the Highlights of the Draft Statement
If you don’t want to write a letter you can sign a petition or sign the coalition letter.
According to the information supplied at the meeting you can also send your comments relating to the DGEIS to the following email addresses: Governor Paterson and Department of Environmental Conservation.
You can send general comments on the gas leasing and hydro-fracking to our NY State legislators Senator Jim Seward and Assemblyman William Magee.
The people who sponsored the meeting we attended would like people to ask that Governor Patterson and the DEC issue a moratorium on drilling until there is more information about the drilling methods which have been found to be unsafe in other states. DEC should adopt regulations that guarantee the safety of our water supply, the most important resource we have.
More information will be available in a subsequent article that goes into more depth regarding what we heard at the meeting on December 8, 2009.
The following list of websites contains information that you might find helpful in writing your comments.
www.marcellus-shale.us/water.htm
www.waterunderattack.com (Burning water from faucet video)
www.earthworksaction.org/pubs/Oilandgaspollution.pdf
