CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

Over 100 people turned out Monday evening for a town hall meeting with Sen. Tom O’Mara and Assemblyman Phil Palmesano at the Penn Yan Village Hall.

For about two hours, the lawmakers listened to several comments from people opposed to hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale in the Finger Lakes.

The crowd applauded at various times when people made specific comments such as urging the two lawmakers to support a ban of hydrofracking in the area.

“The gas isn’t going anywhere. We need to be smart and wait for a proven way to take it out. Let’s do it safely and not jump the gun,” said Michelle Morehouse.

O’Mara said he wants to hear from the experts within the Department of Environmental Conservation on whether the practice can be done safely. If he is convinced it can be done safely, he will support the practice. He said he also wants to learn more about a proposed 4,000 ft. set back from a lake.

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Why RGGI Should Be Repealed in New York:

NY’s Participation in RGGI is Unconstitutional:
 No legislation, participation through Gov. Pataki’s Memorandum of Understanding and Gov. Paterson’s Executive Order
 Taxation without representation
 A lawsuit has been filed in NYS Supreme Court challenging it’s constitutionality

Increases Costs to Energy:
 $900 Million in permits (as of 9/2011) sold as a requirement to energy plants that emit CO2
 Increased cost of production passed on to consumers, considered an ultra vires tax
 Rates for electricity could increase anywhere from 2% to 23% according to the Associated Industries of Massachusetts (A.I.M.)
 NYS has the 2nd highest electricity costs according to the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council’s 2010 Energy Cost Index (which cited data for 2008 through October from the U.S. Energy Information Administration)
 NYS electricity prices are 58 percent higher than the national average

Lack of Transparency:
 The RGGI program operates in secret with little know about who is trading on this government-created carbon commodities market
 RGGI has refused open records requests claiming they are a non-governmental agency despite having been created by ten state governments
 To date, RGGI has not released information regarding salaries and benefits paid to RGGI bureaucrats
 Companies trading on this carbon commodities market are unknown – only a list of prospective bidders is released
 Prospective bidders are a “who’s who” of Wall Street firms, including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase

RGGI is Ineffective:
 According to RGGI’s own consultants, there will be no drop in CO2 emissions for two decades due to RGGI bureaucrats setting the cap too low
 Gov. Christie said “This program is not effective in reducing greenhouse gases and is unlikely to be in the future. The whole system is not working as it was intended to work. It is a failure.”

“RGGI has not changed behavior and it does not reduce emissions,” Christie said. “RGGI does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses, with no discernable or measurable impact upon our environment.”

Adverse Affects on Plants and Communities:
 Making it difficult for energy producing plants to stay in business, threatening closures
 Loss of good paying jobs
 Loss of tax base directly affect the county, towns and school districts
 $326,693,566 taken out of economy in NY due to the required purchase of permits
 $90 Million diverted by Governor Paterson to balance the FY 2010 budget, not to the green initiatives it was intended for
 The costs associated with this regulation contributes to NYS’s 50th rating in Business Climate

Bottom line: RGGI is unconstitutional, ineffective, lacks transparency, drives electricity costs up, and puts jobs and communities in jeopardy.

People from all corners of Ontario descended on Queens Park last week demanding local municipal decision-making power be reinstated with respect to industrial wind turbines. While municipalities and residents have their say on, for example, where a new Tim Hortons or Walmart is located, Mr. McGuinty continues to allow faceless unelected bureaucrats and the companies themselves decide on wind towers.

With no planning directives from council, and no yellow roadside zoning signs, Mr. McGuinty’s Green Energy Act has neutered municipal councilors, taking away their power, and the power of area people, to have their say.

As people rallied outside, Opposition Leader Tim Hudak was inside formally questioning, “..you’re bringing in the largest industrial wind farm in the entire province in West Niagara and the Glanbrook area…Will you do the right thing and support the bill…and restore local decision-making like the 80 municipalities have called for?”

“The bill” Hudak referred to, the Local Municipality Democracy Act, 201, was introduced by MPP Todd Smith from Prince Edward Hastings. The legislation, proposing to restore municipal planning previously stripped by the Green Energy Act, was debated that afternoon.

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The Jefferson County Industrial Development Agency has signed on to help Guilfoyle Ambulance Service move and expand.

Following in the footsteps of the Watertown Local Development Corp., the agency board approved a $252,500 loan for the service at 5 percent interest for 20 years. The service plans to purchase the former Covidien building on Faichney Drive for its new home.

“This is part of the money for renovations and new equipment,” board Treasurer Michelle D. Pfaff said.

The for-profit ambulance service now has 121 employees, but expects to add 74 in the next three years.

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The Canandaigua Town Board will hold a public hearing for a proposed moratorium on high volume hydraulic fracturing at 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 5 at the Canandaigua Town Hall, 5440 Routes 5 and 20.

The moratorium would ban hydrofracking — the controversial natural gas drilling method — for a certain period of time, thus giving the town more time to research the issue and to possibly change the town’s zoning code.

The town passed a resolution Oct. 24 asking that the legislature of New York, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, apply the same standards to the Canandaigua Lake Watershed and Finger Lakes Watershed that has been issued in New York City and Syracuse.

A recently released study on natural gas drilling and contamination of water wells, contentious issues as drillers swarm to a lucrative shale formation beneath Pennsylvania, had an error, according to researchers from Penn State University.

The researchers reported that there is far less evidence of well contamination by bromides, salty mineral compounds that can combine with other elements to cause health problems, than first suggested. The researchers are reviewing the entire study, released in October, after discovering that results from an independent water testing lab contained the error.

One water well, not seven, showed increased bromide levels after drilling, the researchers said in a statement issued last week by The Center for Rural Pennsylvania, a state-funded agency that first released the study.

One of the Penn State University researchers, Bryan Swistock, said in an email that the study didn’t go through an independent scientific peer review process because of a Center for Rural Pennsylvania policy that reports must first go to the General Assembly before outside publication.

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We, the undersigned, strongly support safeguarding the environment, public health, natural resources and scenic splendor of New York’s Catskills, Finger Lakes and Southern Tier regions. With that goal in mind, we request that you immediately withdraw the Marcellus Shale revised draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (RD SGEIS) in order to resolve the fundamental shortcomings documented herein.

There is a de facto moratorium on horizontal hydrofracturing in New York’s Marcellus Shale pending adoption of a Final SGEIS. The Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) 2009 Draft SGEIS received such withering criticism that Governor Paterson signed Executive Order No. 41 requiring DEC to: “make such revisions to the Draft SGEIS that are necessary to analyze comprehensively the environmental impacts associated with high-volume hydraulic fracturing combined with horizontal drilling, ensure that such impacts are appropriately avoided or mitigated …” On 1/1/11, you signed a “continuation” of that Order.

The RD SGEIS Must Be Withdrawn Due to DEC’s Failure to Fulfill Executive Order No. 41

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The state Department of Environmental Conservation will let the public comment on its proposed rules for hydraulic fracturing for an additional month, the agency announced Wednesday.

The public comment period on the DEC's 1,500-page environmental review and proposed regulations will now close Jan. 11. It had been slated to end Dec. 12.

In September, the DEC released its draft rules for comment, after an incomplete draft was released in July. But an agency spokeswoman said many people had asked for more time to comment, and the DEC would grant the request.

"Many individuals and organizations requested additional time to prepare comments," spokeswoman Emily DeSantis said in a statement. "We have decided to extend the comment period by 30 days to Jan. 11."

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