NYC Democrats Target Upstate with Proposed Ban on PA Frack Waste
Every now and again anti-fossil fuel nutters in New York will pop up from whatever hole they live in to claim that the couple of NY landfills accepting drill cuttings (leftover rock and dirt) from PA shale drilling will result in an environmental apocalypse. One landfill in particular, in Chemung County, seems to be the focus of their ire (see NY Anti Drillers Apoplectic Over Soil in Chemung Co. Landfill). From time to time they attract the attention of some of NY’s less-than-bright legislators who float bills to ban “importing frack waste” into the haughty Empire State. They tried in 2014 (see NY Dem Senators Want to Ban PA Drill Cuttings from NY Landfills). Fortunately, the bill went nowhere. Earlier this year the anti-drilling group Environmental Advocates of New York published a 24-page sham “report” trying to rekindle momentum for a frack waste ban (see Anti-Drillers Try to Ban Drill Cuttings from PA in NY Landfills). Environmental Advocates appears to be in league with Democrats from the New York City area who have floated yet another bill to ban PA frack waste from entering NY. New York City just LOVES to tell us hicks in Upstate what we can and can’t do…
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We just knew getting a “virtual pipeline” facility built in ultra-liberal Broome County, NY was proceeding a little too easy. MDN recently told you about a proposed virtual pipeline (i.e. natgas trucking system) coming to MDN’s neighborhood. NG Advantage wants to build a new compressor station and tap into the Millennium Pipeline where it crosses the Chenango River near Port Dickinson, a suburb of Binghamton, in Broome County (see 
On Friday, Exxon Mobil took the gloves off and went after the out-of-control New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Last year Schneiderman decided he would try to shake down Exxon for billions of dollars, claiming the company wasn’t being honest with shareholders about the threat of man-made global warming, which doesn’t actually exist. He said Exxon should have done more to warn shareholders that they invest in a filthy, rotten, human-killing Big Oil company–a company whose stock will someday implode. We’ve covered Schneiderman’s witch hunt from the beginning (
Talk about mixed signals. In April, MDN brought you the sad (and angering) news that once again Gov. Andrew Cuomo has caved to political pressure and instructed the Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to deny stream crossing permits for National Fuel Gas Company’s (NFG) Northern Access Pipeline project (see 
In May MDN told you that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo had announced plans to construct a new “state-of-the-art, locally-sourced mini-power grid” that will connect to the statewide electric grid but will also be able to operate independently, to power the Empire State Plaza in Albany–a complex of buildings in downtown Albany housing much of New York State government (see 
We all know that currently, New York State is closed for business when it comes to shale drilling (see 
Here we go again. A new “study” published today by Harvard University researchers supposedly indicates that Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia are loaded with underground natural gas storage sites that may leak like the Aliso Canyon debacle in California. The new study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, titled “A national assessment of underground natural gas storage: identifying wells with designs likely vulnerable to a single-point-of-failure” (full copy below), says there are 14,138 active underground storage (UGS) wells in 317 locations/facilities in the U.S. The study identifies 2,715 active UGS wells across 160 facilities that, like the failed well at Aliso Canyon, were not originally designed for gas storage. (Gasp) Even worse: The majority (88%) of these repurposed wells are located in OH, MI, PA, NY, and WV. (Double gasp) Here’s the thing: Aliso Canyon was one facility that had a catastrophic failure (a failure which, by the way, hurt no one–it just released some extra methane into the air). While it may be interesting and useful to know (for accident prevention) that there are other facilities constructed years ago, like Aliso Canyon, that were later repurposed to be used for underground storage–each and every location is different, with unique characteristics. No two storage sites are the same geologically. It does not follow, as implied in the report, that because Aliso Canyon leaked, that these other “similar” facilities will eventually fail and leak. However, our main objection to this research–and why we call it fake research–is that the researchers never bothered to go into the field and take air samples to see if there is any ACTUAL leaking going on at any of these thousands of other sites! Fake mainstream news sources are just now picking up on the story and running it. Nothing sells newspapers (or grabs online eyeballs) like fear. And hey, it serves the mainstream narrative that fossil fuels are the ultimate evil. Here’s the kicker: This latest “research” was funded, in large part, by the virulent anti-fossil fuel Heinz Foundation and The Nature Conservancy. That tells you all you need to know about this latest bought-and-paid-for “research” study with a Harvard label slapped on it…
On Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans to construct a new “state-of-the-art, locally-sourced mini-power grid” that will connect to the statewide electric grid but will also be able to operate independently, to power the Empire State Plaza in Albany–a complex of buildings in downtown Albany housing much of New York State government. The energy-efficient microgrid will supply 90% of the power for the 98-acre downtown Albany complex, and is expected to save the Plaza more than $2.7 million in annual energy costs. The project will also remove more than 25,600 tons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere each year – the equivalent of taking more than 4,900 cars off the road – supporting New York’s goal to reduce emissions by 40 percent by 2030 from 1990 levels. In an emergency, it can power a shelter for Albany residents. So what will power the magical microgrid and deliver this nirvana of cheaper electricity AND reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions at the same time? Is it a huge solar array errected in Albany or in the nearby countryside? Nope–the sun doesn’t always shine. Must be a wind farm, maybe off the coast of Long Island? Nope. The wind doesn’t always blow. The magic fuel for the magic microgrid is, you guessed it–fracked shale gas from the Marcellus. Yes, Andrew Cuomo is the same governor who has banned fracking in New York State and is blocking construction of pipelines to bring “fracked gas” from Pennsylvania into New York State. And some people think Donald Trump is crazy?!!!…
MDN previously reported on a $900 million Marcellus gas-fired electric generating plant coming to Orange County, NY (see 
You know how money-grubbing, cheap, careless and in general no-good those Big Oil companies are, right? They only care about themselves. They seek to rape and pillage Mom Earth, keeping piles of gold in their coffers, killing humankind in the process. That’s the picture painted by anti-fossil fuel nuts. Here’s the real picture: In 2016, between employees and the corporation, Exxon Mobil donated more than $50 million to colleges and universities across the United States. That is a staggering number. Many of those colleges and universities were located in the Appalachian basin (Marcellus/Utica), including $2.7 million in PA, $800K in OH, $1.4 million in VA, $3.2 million in NY and $1.2 million in NJ. Just the opposite of the negative picture painted by the enemies of fossil fuels… 
Here’s one that really gets us hot and bothered. MDN is written from Upstate New York (near Binghamton). We covered, extensively, the battle to allow fracking (and now, natural gas pipelines) in our beloved home state. We won’t plow up old ground again except to say that one of the battles fought, and lost, was over whether or not local municipalities can ban fracking for everyone. Two backwater towns in New York–Dryden (Tompkins County) and Middlefield (Otsego County) passed town bans that were challenged in court. The case eventually went to NY’s highest court, the Court of Appeals. We (pro-drillers) lost. Local towns now have the right to outright ban fracking–if and when it ever becomes legal to frack in New York. Some call it the “home rule” law. This was all done at the prompting and urging of a very corrupt governor–Andrew Cuomo. The judges on NY’s high court are appointed by the governor. It’s the worst kind of incest and miscarriage of justice. So along comes a wind power project that a corporation wants to build in Western NY. Some of the locals don’t want it. If they convince their towns to pass a ban on wind projects for the town, guess what? In that case NY state law will overrule the town and allow the wind project to get built anyway. How, on God’s green earth, is that in any sense fair? Here’s what we hope: We hope at least one of the towns involved passes a ban and it goes to court and they throw the high court’s decision on frack bans right back in their face. It’s time to expose the energy double standard in NY…
It’s so enormously frustrating to live in The Empire State–New York. Which is where MDN is produced. Our illustrious governor, Andrew Cuomo, has drunken deeply from the man-made global warming Kool Aid fountain. Cuomo, a radically left Democrat, may or may not actually believe in man-made global warming. Makes no difference. He, like other lib Dems, find it a useful tool to control the population. If you can control what people use for energy (and what how they pay for health care), you control their lives, period. Cuomo has made a decision to align himself with global warming nutters who oppose all fossil fuels because supposedly said fossil fuels, when burned, release carbon dioxide into the air. CO2 becomes “trapped” in the atmosphere and takes a long time to dissipate, creating (as the disproved theory goes) a “greenhouse effect,” trapping heat and (eventually) catastrophically warming Mom Earth. The problem, that we’ve pointed out countless times, is that empirical data–where people use instruments to monitor “average” temperatures–proves the earth has been cooling for the past 20 years. That little fact never makes it into mainstream media because it destroys the mythology that’s developed around this POLITICAL issue. Global warming is not, as the left pushes, about science. It is about politics. But we digress. Yesterday Gov. Cuomo released burdensome new methane emissions regulations that will further hamstring New York’s wilting conventional (not shale) oil and natural gas drillers. It seems Andy simply wants to extinguish the rest of the industry in our beloved home state…