CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

AMP plans on this car being priced for a well-off-but-not-ultra-rich budget, so a converted car runs about $50,000. If you already own a Saturn Sky, budget $25,000 for your conversion – but this after-sale services is only for those living in the Greater Cincinnati area. While it still sounds pricy, AMP says the conversion will cost around $0.04 per mile to run, which is pretty darn cheap.

Try pouring 10 gallons of industrial waste into a 10-ounce cup, and there you have the disposal problem regulators face with the natural gas industry settling into the Twin Tiers.

Once the drilling starts and millions of gallons of waste water begin flowing from thousands of wells, it will become everybody's problem, environmentalists say.

Treatment plants set up in the region aren't designed to handle the volume or type of waste expected from tapping the Marcellus Shale Formation, the rich reserve of natural gas running under the Southern Tier and Catskill region, throughout Pennsylvania and parts of Ohio and West Virginia.

"It's just the sort of question people are puzzling over here," Jim Tierney, assistant commissioner for water resources with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said recently.

Sparky Delong, who operates a private treatment plant in Franklin, Pa., has an answer: Build more plants.

(Click to read entire article)

With the advent of $4-a-gallon gasoline has come a bruising debate in Congress over whether to intensify efforts to drill on federal lands, including part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. But while those hoping to lower prices at the pump are clamoring for new oil, most of the new onshore drilling of the past seven years has produced natural gas, not oil.

The Bush administration, in its effort to expand energy production, has issued more than three times the number of well-drilling permits on Western lands as in the Clinton administration’s last six years. But oil production in that region during the Bush years is 12 percent below average levels from the Clinton era, according to federal data.

Oil production declined over all to an average of 97.9 million barrels annually from 2001 through 2006, compared with average levels of 111.5 million barrels during the Clinton administration.

Drilling in the West is more likely to provide natural gas. Natural gas production has increased by 34 percent during President Bush’s term in office, compared with the annual production levels during President Bill Clinton’s term. On federal land in the West, average natural gas production during the first six years of this presidency was 2.4 billion cubic feet annually, up from 1.8 billion, on average, during the previous eight years, federal data show.

NY%20Times%20%20Gas%20Drilling.pdf

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Buffalo news reporter, John Bonfatti, prior to the publication of his 7/12/08 article on wind power, "Wind on the Water." Mr. Bonfatti agreed during our discussion that wind-generated electricity will have no effect at all on our oil dependence problem. Yet, Bonfatti repeated these very claims made by a local wind proponent in his article totally unquestioned. Consequently, Bonfatti's article came off more as a wind promotion piece, than as an unbiased, investigative report.

When Mr. Bonfatti admitted wind had nothing to do with oil dependence in our conversation, I asked him, "Why then, does the wind industry resort to lying about reducing our dependence on foreign oil in order to sell wind energy to the public?" Bonfatti said, "Oh, that's just politics," as if that somehow made the lies justifiable.

This is the sad reality of where our country is today - financially-motivated corporations, together with self-serving, energy-illiterate politicians, and agenda-driven media, all leading by deceiving. Deception only leads to division and error. The massive division that's been created by industrial wind is clearly evident in every community it enters.

(Click to read entire letter)

CPA member organization, Cohocton Wind Watch is a plaintiff on this legal action. Another reason to support the CWW legal fund.

Jim Ostrowski is representing a large group of plaintiffs who are suing the state, state leadership, and several companies who have (or may) receive state economic development incentives. The defendants include Delphi, American Axle, IBM, and Bass Pro.

Ostrowski argues that this provision of the state constitution prohibits “corporate welfare”:

“The money of the state shall not be given or loaned to or in aid of any private corporation or association, or private undertaking; nor shall the credit of the state be given or loaned to or in aid of any individual, or public or private corporation or association, or private undertaking, but the foregoing provisions shall not apply to any fund or property now held or which may hereafter be held by the state for educational, mental health or mental retardation purposes.”

(Click to read entire announcement)

WASHINGTON, July 23, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The Free Enterprise Action Fund (Ticker: FEAOX) submitted a letter (linked here:) to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requesting the SEC to warn publicly-owned companies against making false and misleading statements pertaining to global warming and other environmental issues.

The FEAOX cited several examples of such false and misleading statements, including the following:

1. Exelon Corp. issued a media release and placed full-page advertisements in major newspapers on July 15, 2008 stating, "The science is overwhelming -- climate change is happening now and human activity is the primary cause."
2. Lehman Brothers issued a report on climate change featuring the so-called "hockey stick" graph to support the notion that humans are causing global warming.
3. The General Electric Company issued a "Call for Action" to "slow, stop and even reverse the damage of greenhouse gasses."
4. Toyota Motor Corp states in a report, "When we drive a vehicle, it consumes fossil fuels and emits CO2, a major contributor to climate change."
5. Goldman Sachs states in a 2007 report, "By now, the dynamics of global warming are widely known, and we find no reason to dispute the scientific assumptions..."
6. Caterpillar said in a public statement that, "We must take action now [to reduce carbon dioxide emissions] or risk serious harm to our planet."

The FEAOX believe the SEC should take action immediately to protect investors, because numerous recent developments (linked here:) have tended to expose the above-mentioned registrant statements (and probably many others) as false and/or misleading. In conclusion, the FEAOX requests that the SEC immediately inform and remind registrants that:

(Click to read the entire report)

A representative of the state Department of Environmental Conservation has canceled an appearance at Wednesday's meeting on gas drilling in Oneonta.

The cancellation comes as the agency has been instructed by Gov. David Paterson to update its rules on gas drilling and as thousands of upstate New Yorkers lease out their land to drillers.

The Otsego County-sponsored meeting will be held as scheduled, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at Oneonta High School, with other speakers addressing concerns of property owners and the public, according to Otsego County Planning Director Terry Bliss.

Earlier this week, Bliss was notified by Bradley Field, director of the DEC's Division of Mineral Resources, that, ``As we discussed this morning, department staff will not be able to attend the scheduled Aug. 6 meeting. We have determined that the best use of our resources at this time is to focus on development of a supplement to the existing generic environmental impact statement (GEIS)."

The GEIS will address how drilling proceeds in the Marcellus and Utica shale beds that underlie much of central New York.

``We will be holding public hearings across the state as part of the scoping process,'' Field wrote.

About a month ago, the DEC also canceled an appearance at a public meeting in Greene, sponsored by the Chenango County Farm Bureau.

That session drew more than 700 people.

COOPERSTOWN - The gas rush continues.

More than 1,500 property owners in Otsego, Delaware and Chenango counties have agreed to let firms prospect for natural gas on their land, even as calls come from some quarters for a moratorium on drilling.

The excitement comes as geologists predict that much of the central New York area is sitting on rich gas deposits, trapped in shale deep in the ground.

Gas has been found in Springfield, and firms are betting big money they’ll find it throughout the area, as they have in northern Pennsylvania.

Two months ago, New York state geologist Richard Nyahay told a crowd of 700 at Unadilla Valley Central School in New Berlin that on a scale where 1.00 is an ideal drilling prospect, this area rates ``.98 or .99.’’ Last month, Nyahay quit his state job to go to work for GasTem USA, a Montreal-based firm that plans to drill in upstate New York, according to the Reuters News Service.

The boom has been building for a few years. At first, landowners typically were offered $2 an acre to sign leases that would permit wells to be drilled. State law guarantees landowners a 12.5 percent royalty on producing wells, and with this incentive, some signed up.

In the interim, energy prices spiked, drilling techniques improved, and the dollars per acre shot up.

About three months ago, Fred and Anna Schoellig of New Lisbon leased 800 acres for $50 an acre.

But on Wednesday, Elmira attorney Christopher Denton, who represents the landowners’ cooperative Central New York, said it’s not uncommon now for land in the Southern Tier to be leased for more than $1,000 an acre.

When leases are recorded in county clerks’ offices, the amounts paid to landowners often are not included. Companies that acquire the drilling rights are free to assign them to a different entity, usually a drilling firm.

(Click to read entire article)

OTSEGO COUNTY

The following are many of the property owners whose leases to allow gas drilling are recorded with the Otsego County Clerk’s Office:

(Click to read list of property owners)

Securities and Exchange Commission, First Wind Holdings Inc., an independent North American wind energy company, announced its plan to raise up to $450 million of proceeds through initial public offering of Class A common shares.

The Newton, Massachusetts-based company said it plans to apply to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol "WNDY". The company did not disclose any further details about how many shares it intends to offer or estimated price range.

First Wind Holdings revealed that New York-based D. E. Shaw group, Madison Dearborn, UPC Wind Partners II, LLC are its main stockholders, each owning more than 5% stake or more.

The company said it intends to use this offering net proceeds to repay outstanding indebtedness and also to fund a portion of expected capital expenditures in 2008 and 2009.

Credit Suisse, Goldman, Sachs & Co., JPMorgan are serving as the underwriters for this offering.

First Wind Holdings LLC posted net loss of $68.07 million in 2007, $26.01 million in 2006 and $18.62 million in 2005. For the quarter ended March 31, 2008, the company incurred a net loss of $18.52 million, versus a net loss of $13.91 million in the same period last year.

The company's portfolio of wind energy projects included approximately 5,564 megawatts of capacity as of June 30, 2008, of which 92 MW were operating and 182 MW were under construction. The company said it has been developing wind energy projects in North America in 2002.