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Anti-Drillers Oppose Converting 2 NY Electric Plants to NatGas

This is the tale of two electrical generating power plants. Both are located in New York State–on opposite sides of the state. One is in Tompkins County (near Ithaca, NY), the other in Chautauqua County (Dunkirk, near Buffalo, NY). Both are powered by coal and both will either need to convert to natural gas or close down.

Something else both have in common: anti-drilling nutters want them closed rather than converted  from burning coal to burning natural gas–even though closure means school and property taxes in both areas will go through the roof–higher than the nosebleed rates they already are. In both cases the power plants are the single largest taxpayer in their respective municipalities. Makes no difference to the nutters because most of them don’t live there and could care less. An update for both the Cayuga Power Plant and the Dunkirk Power Plant…
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Anatomy of a Moratorium – Why Some NY Towns Ban Fracking

Ill-informed (we would call them willfully ignorant) people show up at a town board meeting and make false statements about the shale drilling industry and ask the board to ban fracking. It’s a scene that plays out repeatedly across New York State, and has just happened again—this time in Pomfret (Chautauqua County), NY, in the western part of the state:

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Exclusive: First NY Marcellus Wells to be Drilled are Identified

breaking news

NOTE: Please see the correction to this story on this page:
MDN Editor Jim Willis Corrects “First NY Marcellus Wells” Story.

An astute MDN subscriber sent us a tip that the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) updated their “Notices of Intent to Issue Well Permits” web page last night at 7:00 pm (Feb 14, 2013). In the list of well permits they “intend” to issue are 43 Marcellus Shale wells and 1 Utica Shale well.

Does this mean DEC Commissioner Joe Martens is getting ready to accept the SGEIS and issue permits? We believe it’s still too early for optimism on that front. However, if New York does decide to move forward and issue drilling permits “within 10 days” after accepting the SGEIS drilling rules, it stands to reason the wells in this list will be the very first wells to receive permission to drill.

We’ve harvested the information for all of the “Intent to Issue” wells, looking up each latitude and longitude and translating it into a street address. We’ve also rearranged the information in an easier to scan and understand format. You won’t find this information anywhere else but on MDN…

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