Dryden Safe Energy Coalition

From New York State Town Law:

From Dr. Don Siegel, Syracuse University:

Last month, the journal of the National Ground Water Association published a paper by an environmental consultant in Nevada in which the proposition is put forth that the vertical transport of contaminants from the Marcellus Shale formation of southern New York to potable, near-surface aquifers is not only plausible, but likely – brought to us in as few as “three years,” he argues, and all because of hydraulic fracturing.

 

It’s an explosive thesis, to be sure – but one that’s also fatally flawed; very good news for those of us who actually live here in upstate New York. Predictably, and perhaps as designed, the paper generated a great deal of attention in the press after ProPublica first reported its conclusions on May 1. But as I attempt to explain below, the physical realities governing the hydrodynamic flow of fluids underground can’t be as Dr. Tom Myers, the report’s author, suggests. I say this as someone who has studied the specific hydrogeology of New York for over 30 years. I found a number of fundamental errors in Myers’s model when I gave it a first, cursory review....

ALBANY, N.Y. –  With all the restrictions in proposed state regulations and local bans, gas companies say about half of their lease holdings in the lucrative Marcellus Shale region in New York state will be off-limits or inaccessible to drilling if the state gives the green light to developers this year.

A coalition of environmental groups is pushing for a complete ban on shale gas drilling, but the industry and landowners hoping to lease to drillers are working to lift some of the restrictions and halt the movement toward local bans.

"Industry estimates that when you look at the cumulative effect of prohibitions and setbacks, 40 to 60 percent of their leasehold is effectively undevelopable," said Tom West, an Albany lawyer representing gas companies...

As part of DSEC's educational mission to present facts, we give you this..."I’ll Take Natural Gas Facts Over Hearsay Any Day."
 

Have you ever noticed when someone outside travels to Dimock, Pennsylvania, searching for truth, all he/she ever reports is hearsay? Take Carol Schoonmaker’s recent guest essay published on MPNNow.com titled Learn the Lessons of one Small Pennsylvania Town, which details her decision to separate fact from fiction. There’s just one problem with Carol’s heart felt trip, where are her facts? Below is my follow up essay submitted to the same paper: Learn the lessons from a little unbiased research — A Pennsylvania resident responds. In it, I clarify and correct some of Carol’s claims with first hand knowledge of the area and industry...

Read the rest. 
 

First, some history...Mr. Armendariz at EPA ultimately resigned over his "crucifixion" remarks but he'll be back, somewhere—they always are. The back story is linked at One of Nine.

And we should be afraid, very afraid, of EPA.  At EID:
 

Recent revelations regarding the deliberate attempts by a regional EPA administrator to “crucify” the oil and gas industry raise troubling questions about EPA political agendas in other regions.  One of these is New York Region 2 out of New York City, which commented on New York’s Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS) with a long list of complaints seemingly designed to undermine the New York Department of Environmental Conservation.  Our Rockefeller-funded anti-natural gas friend Walter Hang notes “EPA Region 2 submitted nearly twice as many pages of critical comments regarding the Revised Draft SGEIS than the original 2009 draft SGEIS”... 

Oh there's a feature and not a bug.

Read the whole thing.
 

In USA Today:

From gas-mileage standards to tax breaks for windmills, public support for "green" energy measures to tackle global warming has dropped significantly in the past two years, particularly among Republicans, a new poll suggests.

Majorities still favor most such tax breaks or restrictions on industry, finds the Stanford University poll to be released today. It shows 65% support gas-mileage standards and 73% support tax breaks for wind and solar power. But just 43% support tax breaks for nuclear power, 26% support increasing gasoline taxes and 18% support hiking taxes on home electricity.
 

Overall, support for various steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions has dropped an average of 10 percentage points since 2010, from 72% to 62%, lead researcher Jon Krosnick says. "Most Americans (62%) still support industry taking steps aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions," Krosnick says, "but they hate the idea of consumer taxes to do it." His group's nationwide polls compared responses from 1,001 people in 2010 to 1,428 people this year....

An op-ed piece re: the Park Foundation that appeared recently in local newspapers—by Dan Fitzsimmons and Bob Williams of the Joint Landowners Coalition:

What has been missed in the debate about the Ithaca-based Park Foundation's advocacy against natural gas development is the object of their opposition. The true targets of the Park Foundation are the people in Marcellus Shale communities of upstate New York.

 

In March 2011, we met with Park Foundation leadership. We were on the hunt for foundations to support the important work of the Joint Landowners Coalition to identify best practices in natural gas development and arm landowners with the information they need to protect themselves and their land...

...Foundation officials explained that their wealthy patrons were reticent to allow their pristine land to be affected by drilling rigs. We replied by telling them we had thousands of farmers who shared the same affection for their land. We described how the farmers were at risk of losing it all to high taxes and costs hitting up against record low profits — and that these farmers wouldn't allow their farms to be developed unless drilling could be done safely. Noting that they understood the plight of farmers, they replied, "We are aware there will be collateral damage from stopping natural gas development."

Thousands of upstaters who toiled all of their lives, some handing down their large or small farms generation to generation, were viewed merely as "collateral damage"...

At CBS San Francisco:

MILPITAS (CBS 5) — Three months ago, CBS 5 caught Solyndra tossing millions of dollars worth of brand new glass tubes used to make solar panels. Now the bankrupt solar firm, once touted as a symbol of green technology, may be trying to abandon toxic waste.

 

It’s a tedious process. Slowly but surely, the shattered remains of brand new solar panel tubes head to a recycling plant in Hayward.

 

Meanwhile the next phase of the company’s liquidation is under way. It involves getting rid of all the heavy metals left inside the building that were used to make the panels...

 

...the disposal process is going smoothly in Fremont, but what about nearby Milpitas? Solyndra leased a building on California Circle for the final assembly of its solar panels. But the cleanup at the leased building in Milpitas is in limbo, because Solyndra doesn’t want to pay...

 

...“Essentially it looks like they left a pretty big mess behind,” San Jose State Assistant Professor Dustin Mulvaney told CBS 5. Mulvaney has written a white paper (.pdf) on solar industry waste for the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition...
 

This is almost funny:
 

Great news for NIMBY activists that want public policy to follow the anthropogenic global-warming agenda but don’t want their vistas cluttered.  The wind farms that they support everywhere else but nearby themselves may be part of the problem...

...Wind power is already one of the worst options in the renewables market.  Wind is unreliable, and the unreliability of energy production causes numerous problems for distribution.  The manufacture and maintenance of the windmills requires a lot of energy, costs a lot of money, and creates a lot of waste, although perhaps not as much as Solyndra left behind.  The blades kill hundreds of thousands of birds a year already, and any expansion will make that destruction much worse.

Of course, the rise in temperature might be beneficial.  No one has shown that even if a warming period occurs naturally or artificially that the overall impact will be relentlessly negative...

At EID:

Typically, environmentalists have conservationist views – in general, they advocate for the preservation, restoration, or enhancement of the natural environment.  I view myself and many of the landowners I know as the true activist environmentalists and hard core conservationists...

...Why is it fine for wind and solar to kill protected animals? It’s not fine, as any true environmental conservationist would admit. And, that’s why natural gas is the energy I support. It creates more power per acre, while having less impact to the environment. It’s really a no brainer if your an environmentalist...

Read the whole thing.