Reader Groundhum sends this item from the Penn Yan Chronicle-Express. The town of Jerusalem is going to expand an old ordinance to stop trucks carrying fracking water from driving through town. Apparently, towns in New York have wide latitude to decide what kind of traffic travels on their roads.
In somewhat related news, one of the two wind companies planning to build towers in Prattsburgh has pulled out. This follows the election in Prattsburgh, where an anti-wind town board was installed.
New York State is the land of NIMBY (not in my back yard). I'm sure we'll eventually have some kind of gas drilling in the Southern Tier, but the wastewater won't be jammed down some convenient well, or trucked to hell and back. Any energy company (and any candidate) who thinks they can jump in for a quick score doesn't understand the politics of the region or the state.
Comments
Alas, if this waste is initially coming from Pennsylvania, as has been reported, restrictions on truck traffic by the Town of Jerusalem and Yates County will probably have little effect, as Yates County is north of Pulteney. So any new laws will most likely be symbolic, much like the 1979 law prohibiting nuclear waste transport. At least they may serve as an inspiration to other towns and counties to take similar actions.
It's true that waste coming from points south won't be coming through Yates Co. to get to Pulteney. But the Marcellus shale and Chesepeake Energy are much larger. I'm pleasantly surprised that the Jerusalem town board is being proactive, and hope that the Yates Co. legislature follows suit. Is it too much to hope that Pulteney might get similarly inspired?
Is the problem in Pulteney that too many board members have signed leases with the gas company?
It is true that Town of Pulteney officials have mentioned that will need to recuse themselves from future deliberations because they have "economic interests" in gas well matters. I seem to recall that in at least on elected panel (town board?), there will not be a quorum if all those with economic interests recuse themselves.
There was a short blurb in today's D&C about benzene releases at drilling sites in the Barnett shale in north Texas. It seems germane as the wells in this area use horizontal drilling and fracking, and Chesapeake Energy is one of the operators–though there was no benzene detected at their sites. Here's the long version from the Dallas Morning News: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-sh...