CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

The letter that arrived in Kim Jastremski’s mailbox on County Highway 52 suggested that she stop protesting the possibility of natural gas drilling. It seemed more of a threat than a request.

Computer-generated, unsigned and sent to about 10 other opponents of a practice known as fracking, it compared them to Nazis and said they were being watched while picking up their children at school in their minivans.

Jennifer Huntington’s abuse is more public, like comments online suggesting that people find out where her dairy sells its milk so that they can stop buying it, or the warning that her farm, which has a lease with a gas company, “will fall like a house of cards when your water is poisoned.” She and other drilling proponents have also been called “sellout landowners that prostitute themselves for money.”

The debate over horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the injection of huge quantities of chemically treated water underground to free up natural gas, has become increasingly contentious across the Eastern United States, with dozens of communities passing or considering bans. But that ill will often takes its most intimate form in small towns and rural areas like this one, best known as the home of baseball’s Hall of Fame, where fracking has emerged as the defining, non-negotiable political issue.

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State senators are scrambling to wrap up months-long negotiations on a sweeping bipartisan bill toughening environmental regulations and imposing a Pennsylvania's booming natural gas industry.

Senators said Friday that the plan is to finishing writing the bill over the weekend before a vote next week. If all goes according to plan, a committee vote would happen Monday, followed by a final floor vote Tuesday.

One negotiator, Democratic Sen. John Yudichak of Luzerne County, says he doesn't want to reveal details of the emerging legislation. If a bill passes, it would go to the House of Representatives, where its fate is uncertain.

In addition to settling environmental regulations and a drilling fee Yudkchak says negotiators are working on a plan to distribute the fee revenue.

An apparent slowdown in a state hydraulic fracturing committee's work can be partially attributed to this: The panelists have plenty of unanswered questions.

Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joseph Martens announced Tuesday the 18-member panel tasked with creating a new fee structure for gas drillers wouldn't be ready to release its recommendations until sometime next year.

An initial set of state-level proposals had originally been expected next month so it could be included in the state budget process that starts in January, but Martens said the panel would be given "all the time it needs."

The move was welcomed by most of the panel, in part because they're still looking for critical information about what kind of resources state agencies will need to properly oversee the gas industry if high-volume hydrofracking is green-lighted in New York.

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Local residents opposed to current Marcellus Shale drilling in Steuben County lobbied Tuesday, Oct. 18, for an Urbana Town board ban on natural gas drilling in the Hammondsport/Urbana area.

Local attorney and environmental advocate Rachel Treichler said the state Department of Environmental Conservation will not issue permits that violate local laws. The DEC is currently holding public hearings on its draft environmental impact study on drilling throughout the state.

Treichler said the town’s existing codes would allow the town to prohibit drilling or drilling-related traffic.

While the general belief is there would be little drilling in the central region of the county because the shale is too close to the surface, Treichler said the DEC issued permits in 2007 for an inactive well drilled on Glen Brook Road. The “shut-in” well was drilled before the state moratorium on drilling in the Marcellus Shale and is located near the Bully Hill winery, Treichler said.

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After previously indicating his agency anticipated high-volume hydraulic fracturing to begin at some point next year, the state's top environmental regulator said Tuesday it's "hard to predict" whether that's going to happen.

Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joseph Martens said an agency panel will need more time to come up with a new fee structure for gas drillers. The panel's state-level recommendations had initially been expected next month, but a procedural change will likely push them back.

When asked if hydrofracking will begin in 2012, Martens didn't make a prognostication.

"It is really hard to predict," Martens said. "We have a lot of work left to do."

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The Syracuse Common Council voted unanimously to ban hydrofracking within city limits. They also voted to limit where fracking wastewater can be stored. It’s not clear if these municipal bans will hold up in court, but Council Majority Leader Kathleen Joy says it was still important for the city to take a stand.

A coalition of good-government groups and environmentalists is calling for more stringent regulations on Pennsylvania's booming natural-gas drilling industry and says the industry should "pay its fair share" in the form of a drilling tax.

The Citizens Marcellus Shale Commission on Monday released an 87-page blueprint for managing the development of the industry. The panel was formed in response to pro-drilling Gov. Tom Corbett's Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission, which released its own set of recommendations over the summer.

The citizens commission calls the Marcellus a valuable resource but says the state must do a better job of minimizing the environmental impact of drilling.

The commission held five hearings across the state and heard testimony from experts and residents who live in the Marcellus Shale.

The city of Syracuse became the latest municipality to ban a controversial technique used with natural gas drilling, following Albany, Buffalo and a dozen or so towns that have moved to restrict or prohibit hydraulic fracturing within its limits.

The Syracuse Common Council approved the ban this afternoon.

Like bans in Albany and Buffalo, the move is largely symbolic. The state Department of Environmental Conservation has proposed banning surface drilling within the Syracuse watershed, and geologists and gas companies don’t anticipate much gas coming out of the northern portion of the Marcellus Shale.

But the ban still sends a message, one that the gas industry didn’t take too kindly.

“The city of Syracuse’s ban on hydraulic fracture stimulation does not consider the safe history of natural gas exploration in New York, the strict regulatory structure of local, state and federal governmental bodies that regulate our industry, and the 60-year record of success in this country,” Brad Gill, executive director of the state’s Independent Oil & Gas Association, said in a statement.

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Members of the leading Marcellus Shale industry group in Pennsylvania will voluntarily disclose chemicals used in each natural gas well as of Jan. 1, the organization said.

An environmental group applauded the move, but said it's not enough.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition represents many of the largest gas drillers in Pennsylvania.

The drillers use a process called hydraulic fracturing, which forces millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, deep into shale formations to free the gas.

The industry believes the process is safe, but environmental groups and people who live in drilling areas have worried about the exact chemicals used in each well, and the possibility of groundwater contamination.

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With the heat on in many communities in the Finger Lakes region to impose a moratorium or ban hydrofracking, natural gas industry experts are revving up their promotion of the controversial drilling method by hosting a series of forums in the region.

Next Wednesday, representatives from the natural gas industry will address Canandaigua-area residents at an event, “Fuel For Thought: A Community Conversation,” beginning at 7 p.m. in the Canandaigua Middle School auditorium.

“Answering questions and providing solid, fact-based information to the community is part of our trade association’s mission,” stated John Holko — chairman of the Independent Oil & Gas Association of New York’s public education committee, which is hosting the forum— in a release. “People have a right to have their questions about the energy industry answered in a responsible and respectful way. These community conversations are designed to be open forum for discussion, just questions asked and answered by working professionals in the field.”

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