CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

In Pennsylvania, miners are pumping millions of gallons of chemical-laced water into horizontal wells to fracture underground shale formations and release valuable natural gas. Plans to do so in New York are mobilizing citizens by the thousands.

It could be a gold rush," said Kenneth Knowles, chairman of the Steuben County Land Owners Coalition. He looks across the Pennsylvania border and sees new cars and full restaurants. Estimates suggest that horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing has pumped more than $2 billion into the Pennsylvania economy, and Knowles wants the same benefits in his county, where the unemployment rate was 10.3 percent as of March. "It will be the one greatest benefit that this county has ever seen, no question about it."

Charles Tauck, principal owner of Sheldrake Point Winery in Ovid, Seneca County, looks south and sees 200-foot drilling rigs, five-acre well pads, hazardous waste holding ponds and accidents contaminating drinking water. He is part of a group of Finger Lakes winery owners and environmentalists who are pushing the state Department of Environmental Conservation to beef up proposed "hydrofracking" rules for fear of environmental destruction, water pollution, chemical spills and loss of quality of life. "It could lay waste to some areas of the Southern Tier," he said.

Their sharply contrasting opinions are found among more than 14,000 public comments sent to the state DEC regarding the 800-page draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement for horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing to develop the Marcellus shale. Geologists estimate that up to 516 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lies trapped in this massive underground formation that stretches from West Virginia and eastern Ohio into Pennsylvania and parts of New York, including the Southern Tier and the Finger Lakes.

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