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Speaking on behalf of the Tompkins County Legislature, Chair Martha Robertson, as part of an Albany event Monday, urged that Governor David Paterson withdraw the proposed document that would regulate natural gas drilling in the Marcellus shale. 

Last month, the Legislature, approving its official comments to the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) without dissent, urged that the State reevaluate its review process and permit no drilling using the hydraulic fracturing technique until an adequate environmental review is completed.

At the session at the State Capitol sponsored by a number of environmental groups, Chair Robertson voiced the Legislature’s concerns that the DEC’s draft supplemental generic environmental impact statement (dSGEIS) is inadequate and that too many questions remain unanswered regarding Marcellus drilling.  Robertson said, “The DEC has failed to meet its basic obligations” under the state’s Environmental Quality Review Act, and should “scrap this document, read the thousands of comments from the public, and start over.”

Robertson maintained that much is at stake regarding the county’s environment and overall quality of life—including the potential of permanent damage to the area’s water supply from toxic fluids, decline in property values, a more than 20-fold increase in truck traffic and other infrastructure issues that “overwhelm” local governments, and what, in fact, amounts to “the industrialization of rural New York.”

Even with adequate safeguards, the Chair questioned whether the gas extraction is the proper course, since she said it would dramatically increase the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, instead of reducing them as the Governor has urged.   Robertson called upon the Governor withdraw the dSGEIS and have the DEC investigate “the true carbon footprint of hydrofracking the Marcellus Shale.”

Among other elected legislators addressing the Albany session were local Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, Assembly members Brian Kavanagh and James Brennan, and State Senator Tom Duane.

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