Submitted by Natasha Pietila [2]
A meeting to discuss the benefits and risks of hydraulic fracturing of the Marcellus Shale [3] in New York was held Tuesday in Katonah in Westchester County.
The meeting was co-sponsored by state Senator Greg Ball (R-Putnam County), Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) and speakers included representatives from environmental groups, an economist, a doctor, residents from Pennsylvania, and Josh Fox, the director the of 2010 documentary Gasland [4].
But gas industry representatives shied away.
Brad Gill and Michael Doyle of Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York and the New York State Petroleum Council, respectively, stated in a letter to Ball [5] that they feared the hearing would be too one-sided, and would, instead, “look forward to other opportunities to inform an open-minded public about the benefits that natural gas development will have on the state’s economy, employment and environment.”
Ball and his co-sponsors proposed the hearing with the intent of opening up the discussion on hydraulic-fracturing, timed to coincide with the release of the Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) [6]Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS), a report which assessed the environmental impacts of drilling – a preliminary revised draft [7] of which, was released last month.
The United States Geological Survey has also announced [8] a revised estimate of how much natural gas is in the Marcellus Shale — and it’s a lot less than first thought. (VIDEO [9])
