Drilling on hold in town

By Tom Grace
Cooperstown News Bureau

October 18, 2008 04:00 am

—

The town of New Lisbon has adopted a six-month moratorium on drilling for natural gas, Supervisor Robert Taylor said Friday.

``We had a number of concerned citizens come to us, worried about the possible environmental impacts, so we decided to act,'' he said.

In the next half-year, New Lisbon officials will study how gas drilling has affected other towns and individuals, including wear and tear on roads, threats and aquifers, he said.

Officials may adopt whatever regulations seem sensible to protect the citizenry, Taylor said.

The town's initiative, which came Tuesday, does not mean that New Lisbon is outlawing exploration for and extraction of gas from the shale that underlies most of the area, said the town supervisor.

``I signed a lease myself, May 30,'' Taylor said. ``There were two gas leases on this property before and nothing came of it. I assumed nothing would happen this time, either, but I may be wrong.''

Taylor said he was offered $75 per acre for 240 acres as a sign-up bonus by Whitmar Exploration Co.

``I have been paid, and it's very nice to have it in the bank,'' he said.

Taylor is just one of thousands of area residents who have leased their land to allow gas drilling on it. According to state officials, geologists and others, northern Pennsylvania and central New York are sitting on rich deposits of gas, trapped in shale thousands of feet below the ground.

Experts have known of this resource for years, but recent advances in drilling techniques, such as hydrofracturing and horizontal drilling, have made recovering it more feasible. The new drilling methods have also alarmed environmentalists because hundreds of thousands of gallons of water are consumed per well, and the drilling produces a toxic slurry.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation has recently rewritten draft guidelines for drilling, and the proposed regulations will be aired at public meetings in the next two months.

Members of the environmental group Sustainable Otsego are not content to rely solely on state protection, member Adrian Kuzminski said this week.

Kuzminski addressed the Otsego County Board of Representatives on Wednesday, asking members to consider establishing agencies to oversee water-quality monitoring and assert control over energy activities, including gas drilling.

``It's up to local government, including the county, to represent the interests of local citizens by exercising all the legitimate authority you have. If you don't do it, who will?'' he continued.

Andrew Latham of Ridgefield, N.J., who is ready to lease about 300 acres he owns in Otego, has a different perspective.

``I've seen these drilling operations, and they're nowhere near as big as a lot of people think,'' he said.

Drilling a well typically takes about a week, as the crew works round the clock, he said. But when they're done, a wellhead is unobtrusive, and the pipelines to them, dug with trenchers, do not make major scars in the landscape.

Latham said he is to be paid $1,000 per acre over 10 years by Lenape Resources Inc., and is urging his neighbors to sign up and cash in now.

``The big money is in the royalties when they hit gas, and why shouldn't we share in that?'' he said.

Latham cautioned that if local residents throw up roadblocks for drillers, the companies will go elsewhere, as the entire area is rich in gas.

In Otego on Wednesday, the Concerned Citizens of Otego will host a meeting at Unatego Central School to discuss the impact that gas drilling may have on the area. A real-estate appraiser, a geologist, a hydrologist and town and county officials will be among those to share their findings on how drilling affects residents and leases affect property values.

The event begins at 7 p.m.

``The gas drilling frenzy also showed us that state and federal governments and agencies _ in the wake of bipartisan deregulation _ are no longer necessarily able to protect Otsego County's resources from exploitation by outside interests. It would be naive to rely on them alone,'' he said.