NY Coalition Releases Declaration of Landowner Rights
Yesterday, the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York (JLCNY) launched a new public relations offensive in Albany, NY aimed at catching the attention of lawmakers. President of the JLCNY, Dan Fitzsimmons, along with other leaders of the coalition and state senators Tom Libous (R-Binghamton) and Tom O’Mara (R-Big Flats), delivered a “Declaration of Landowner Rights” to lawmakers. The Declaration (a copy is embedded below) contains six points that the JLCNY says are constitutionally protected under federal and state law, and they are reasserting and claiming those rights.
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The anti-drillers in New York are not content to block horizontal drilling. They increasingly have turned their attention to conventional, vertical natural gas drilling as their target, trying to shut down or otherwise harass an industry that has been safely operating in the state for decades.
Guess who’s now on board the anti-drilling bus? Peter Yarrow, of the sixties folk singing group Peter, Paul and Mary. Or as MDN editor Jim Willis used to call them back in the 1980s, “Peter, Paul and Commie.” Yeah, the singers of Puff the Magic Dragon have always been politically active—on the far left. In the 1980s they flew to Nicaragua to show their support for the brutal Socialist/Communist dictator Daniel Ortega. Why is it liberals love the commie dictators like Ortega and Castro? But we digress.
MDN reported earlier this week that certain key New York State senators (and others) were signaling that if/when hydraulic fracturing is allowed to go forward in the state, it may only happen in communities that support it (
In an interesting development in the long fight to allow shale gas drilling in New York State, two key state senators are signaling a compromise may come in the form of, “if you want it, you can get it” with respect to fracking. That is, communities that support fracking will likely be the ones who will get it, at least at first, and maybe they will be the only ones to get it.
Is it any surprise that eager beaver, go-get-em NY Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens now says that his department’s review of comments on proposed new fracking rules won’t be done before end of summer, “perhaps”? No, not a surprise at all. This is typical Martens delay tactic behavior.