CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

ALBANY — The gap between opponents and supporters of gas drilling may be as massive as the gray Capitol that was the site of Monday's opposing rallies on the issue.

But the two sides do have one thing in common. It's the reason why some 500 folks against drilling and about 250 drilling proponents, according to police, braved the battering rain, until opponents moved inside the Capitol complex.

Both camps agree that drilling the gas-rich Marcellus shale, which sits beneath Sullivan County and the Southern Tier, would be the biggest thing the state has seen.

"It's going to forever change the way New York does business," said Ramsay Adams, executive director of the Catskill Mountainkeeper environmental group. "It'll make it an energy state, like Texas, Colorado and West Virginia, and those aren't pretty places."

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