Burlington Otsego County Financial

State Comptroller DiNapoli to speak at Democratic Dinner

All this from Gas?

We went to a meeting held in Liverpool, NY on December 8, 2009. Similar meetings have been held in nearby communities over the past year. Information from both sides of the issue has been presented and reported on by the local newspapers. If you missed the meetings and would like one in our community there are people who are willing to hold  a meeting if we only ask them.

 Speakers described the type of drilling , called high-volume hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling or hydro-fracking. The drilling is done by drilling vertically and then using water mixed with chemicals injected into the ground under pressure to fracture the layer of shale that is way below the surface. Once the shale is fractured the gas can be extracted when drilled horizontally. The drilling is over the period of about 12-18 months for each gas well. A well can be productive over a period of 40 years.

The DEC says it is a relatively risk-free drilling procedure; that they are experienced regulators, and there have been few accidents. Actually there have been about 270 drilling accidents in NY over the years. The fracking is relatively new. It began in 1991 and in 1996 they began using the current method called slick water fracking. There is little the DEC can do in terms of regulation because of the 2005 federal legislation exempting the gas and oil industry from the responsibility to clean up superfund sites and which also gave them exemption to the Clean Water Act.

As of February 2009 there were 839 leases signed in Otsego County, some of them are your friends and neighbors in the Town of Burlington. This type of drilling is not just being done in our area. It has already been done and is producing in Montana, South Dakota, Texas, Colorado, West Virginia, Arkansas and Pennsylvania. To see what communities like ours have already encountered because of the drilling you can take a look at Hickory, PA . You can visit Dimock, PA only 105 miles from here on the NY border, in Northeast PA to see what it is like.

  Here are some statistics from the meeting. Hopefully this will help those who haven’t yet considered what the near future would be like if drilling is done in our community and arm those who have already considered asking the governor and the DEC to protect our land from the disasters that befell our neighbors in Pennsylvania and other states.

The Otsego County Farm Bureau news

History of Rochester and Monroe county, New York, from the earliest historic times to the beginning of 1907

Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association, ... annual meeting with constitution and by-laws and list of members

Proceedings of the New York state historical association with the Quarterly journal, 2nd-21st annual meeting with a list of new members

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NEW YORK STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION THE SIXTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING, WITH CONSTITUTION. BY-LAWS AND LIST OF MEMBERS