Guest Post: Anti-Drilling Bias at Lebanon, NY Town Board Meeting [Free]
The following guest viewpoint was written by Bryant La Tourette, a Chenango County landowner, businessman and member of one of the largest landowner coalitions in the Marcellus and Utica Shale region. Bryant has attended 19 town board meetings throughout the shale region, most recently the Town of Lebanon, NY just last week (see this MDN story warning of the impending meeting).
Bryant provides an eyewitness account of what happened at the meeting, including an anti-drilling bias by the town supervisor running the meeting.
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The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court (the appellate court in PA) yesterday issued ruling on the zoning portion of the newly enacted Act 13 drilling law—and they ruled it unconstitutional. A full copy of the court’s opinion and ruling is embedded below. This is round two in the court fight. Round three, an appeal to the PA Supreme Court, will almost certainly come from Gov. Tom Corbett (he has as much as promised it).
Gov. Cuomo’s rumored plan to begin horizontal hydraulic fracturing of shale for oil and gas (mostly gas) in New York State is an important issue that threatens to fracture the alliance of those of us on the pro-drilling side of the debate. Many people (including MDN) are rightly outraged that not all landowners in all areas of the state will be given the opportunity to participate in drilling—at lease initially (if you believe the rumors about the governor’s plan).
Forbes magazine landed the interview everyone has been trying to get: George Phydias Mitchell. He’s known as the father or inventor of the technology we now call shale fracking. Unfortunately, the 93 year-old Mitchell said he’s in favor of federal regulation of fracking and called smaller, independent drillers “wild” indicating they need to be reigned in.
Many townships in the Southern Tier area of New York State want Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Department of Environmental Conservation to know they support responsible gas drilling. Tuesday night the town board in Bainbridge (Chenango County) voted to adopt a resolution supporting drilling (if by support you mean let’s wait until the DEC issues its new rules). The towns of Preston and Guilford, also Chenango County, both voted to approve the resolution Wednesday night. The resolution was slated for a vote in both Afton and Oxford townships (again, Chenango County), but MDN does not have details yet on the outcomes there—although it was likely positive.