NY DEC Continues Secret Meetings with Anti-Drilling Groups

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secret meetingIt’s now after Labor Day and still no word about a release of new drilling rules in New York State from the Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Last week MDN passed along word from the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY) sounding the alarm that Gov. Cuomo was being pressured to postpone a decision on releasing new fracking rules until after the November election (see this MDN story). We may now know why they sounded the alarm. In what appears to be a troubling trend, the DEC continues to have informal (we would call them secret) meetings with anti-drilling environmentalist organizations, like the Sierra Club, NRDC and Riverkeeper. If the DEC were doing this with landowner groups there would be an outcry from those very same organizations. At any rate, the latest attempt by anti-drillers to stall the release of fracking rules seems to center on the call for yet another study—this one on potential so-called health affects from drilling. From the New York Times late last week:

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