CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

If there is a once-upon-a-time to this story, it would have been in the Town of Sanford in the fall of 2007.

Residents there had been farming the land for generations without much thought to what lies beneath it. That all changed when landmen began showing up with unsettling frequency, urging residents to lease their mineral rights.

Dewey Decker, town supervisor and owner of an 1,150-acre farm, decided to look a little deeper. He attended town meetings across the border in Pennsylvania, where he began hearing the phrase "Marcellus Shale."

Two years later, those words have become part of everyday conversations, Decker and some of his neighbors have become millionaires, and New York has become embroiled in a debate over how to handle the natural gas riches underneath the southern part of the state.

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