Coming soon to a fire hall, museum, legion hall, university or television set near you: The Calvin Tillman Show. For those new to the drilling debate, Calvin Tillman is, or rather was, mayor of the small town of DISH, Texas which sits smack in the middle of the Barnett Shale deposit. Mr. Tillman has made a cottage industry of touring the country, including the Marcellus Shale region, and accusing gas drilling companies of poisoning the good citizens of the USA wherever they drill. His evidence? Well, er, let’s not bother with evidence. It’s the accusations that matter! And the children! His children! Other people’s children! Headaches, nose bleeds, asthma…the list goes on. Problem is, there’s never any evidence that ties drilling activities in the DISH region with said ailments, even though a number of environmental tests have been performed.

Mr. Tillman and fellow Texan Tim Ruggiero, a landowner who claims he too was adversely affected by gas drilling, founded an organization in 2010 called ShaleTest.org. The organization’s stated aim according to their website: “ShaleTest.org is a non-profit organization that will collect environmental data, and provide environmental testing to lower income families and neighborhoods that are effected by natural gas exploration.”

In the spring of this year, ShaleTest.org became affiliated with (ie funded by) the larger organization Earthworks, an organization whose goal is to stop mining and energy extraction of every kind on the planet. Apparently Earthworks has showered its largesse on the good Mr. Tillman who can now devote himself full-time to traveling the country and bashing the drilling industry.

Before Mr. Tillman co-founded ShaleTest.org, MDN had the pleasure of hearing him in person when he made an anti-gas campaign stop in Binghamton, NY in February 2010. You can read about that meeting here.

If you would like to hear Mr. Tillman in person when he visits the Northeast, you can find his current speaking itinerary here.

Below you’ll find the “top 5” lists and this week’s calendar listings.

Happy reading,
Jim Willis, Editor

Read More “MDN Weekly Update – Apr 24, 2011”

MDN attended a meeting of the Central New York Landowner’s Coalition on Saturday, April 9th in New Berlin, NY. Look for stories coming in the near future that detail what was discussed at the meeting. The CNY Coalition held two sessions that day, one in the morning for part of the members of the coalition, and another identical meeting in the afternoon. The coalition is so big it requires two sessions to handle all the members.

The crowd in the morning session, which MDN attended, numbered around 400 in the audience. The Evening Sun reports the crowd in the afternoon session was about 600 people. The meeting in the morning was orderly and uneventful. But it seems MDN missed the “fun” in the afternoon session:

An otherwise civil gathering of about 600 members of the Central New York Landowners Coalition at Unadilla Valley Central School Saturday turned ugly as protesters erected ‘no frak’ signs out in front of the school, took photos of cars and, later, defamed a coalition’s leader’s ‘Pass Responsible Gas Drilling’ banner located on the lawn of his Route 8 home.

CNYLC Steering Committee member Steve Gage said the perpetrators were taking photos of business decals on automobiles so people also opposed to drilling would know not to patronize those businesses. He said he called the police to his home to investigate his banner which had a swastika painted on it in red along with a racial slur.*

MDN has previously written about anti-drilling protestors who have broken the law by disrupting meetings and shutting down workplaces. To be fair, not all those who oppose drilling resort to these tactics—it’s a small minority. However, these incidents seem to be happening with more frequency.

Below you’ll find the “top 5” lists and this week’s calendar listings.

Happy reading,
Jim Willis, Editor

*Norwich Evening Sun (Apr 11, 2011) – Protesters target gas landowners meeting (PDF format)

Read More “MDN Weekly Update – Apr 17, 2011”