Health Impacts

We now know a bit more about where things stand with the “health review” taking place of New York’s proposed new drilling regulations (called the SGEIS). When Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens announced he was asking NYS Health Commissioner Nirav Shah to conduct a review of the SGEIS’ handling of potential health impacts of fracking on residents, he said that Shah would assemble a panel of “outside experts” to advise him.

It appears the outside experts have been identified but haven’t agreed (yet) to the money being offered by the DEC and Health Department to do the work. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on a Nov. 29 deadline. Martens says it’s still possible to make that deadline. Here’s what he said on Friday to reporters:

Read More “NY DEC Com. Martens Gives Update on SGEIS Health Review”

The news in New York on the future of drilling has just gone from bad to worse. True to form, and as MDN has been telling your for more than a year now, Joe Martens—the Commissioner of New York’s Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC)—has once again delayed the release of new drilling rules for the state. As near as MDN can tell, the delay is indefinite—certainly until well into 2013.

Issuing a press release yesterday (read it below), Martens says he’s requested NYS Health Commissioner Nirav Shah to conduct a “health impact analysis” of hydraulic fracturing before the DEC will release new drilling rules. Here’s the (sad, maddening, tragic) press statement from fox-in-henhouse Martens:

Read More “Bad to Worse in NY: Martens Invokes Another Delay for SGEIS”

Anti-drilling book author and former Gannett reporter Tom Wilbur, who blogs about Marcellus Shale drilling here, still has his sources in Albany. And those sources tell him that Gov. Cuomo remains undecided about releasing new drilling rules for New York (called the SGEIS). They also told him more details about the recent secret meeting held by the Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and virulently anti-drilling groups, a meeting where more delays were discussed, favorably, as it turns out:

Read More “More Details Leak on Secret DEC Meeting with Enviro Groups”

It’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:

Read More “NY DEC Continues Secret Meetings with Anti-Drilling Groups”