Fracking hearing draws 200
Nearly 200 people were estimated to have been in attendance at a hearing Aug. 23 that centered on the issue of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and whether it should be allowed in New York.
A number of state senators, including Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who represents much of central Westchester, were joined by a dozen environmental advocates at the hearing in Katonah that was hosted by state Sen. Greg Ball, R,C-Patterson.
The hearing was organized in response to the state Department of Environmental Conservation”™s July 1 draft supplemental generic environmental impact statement that the state moratorium on fracking be lifted.
At stake in the debate over whether to allow fracking in New York is the potential for more than $11.4 billion in economic output, $1.4 billion in state and local tax revenue and the creation of as many as 15,000 to 18,000 new jobs, all over the next 10 years, according to a July report by the Manhattan Institute.
However, opponents say fracking, which involves the high-pressure fracturing of underground shale deposits in order to get to the natural gas deposits below, will add to air pollution and could threaten water supplies in the vicinity of drilling sites.
“My general feeling is that we”™ve got to do everything we can to create jobs but we can”™t do it at the expense of our drinking water and our environment,” Ball told the Business Journal earlier in August.
Cuomo launches business initiative
Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Aug. 24 launched the “New York Open for Business” campaign, a communications and marketing effort aimed at attracting businesses to the state and promoting job creation.
The initiative will be headed up by a nine-member advisory committee of business executives and will also look to recruit a major communications firm to create a campaign to promote the advantages of doing business in New York, according to a release from the governor”™s office.
The campaign is expected to incur costs of at least $10 million and as much as $50 million if deemed necessary, according to the release, with the funding coming from the Empire State Development Corp.”™s 2011-2012 budget in addition to other existing economic development funds.
Hayworth meets Israeli P.M.
Last week, U.S. Rep. Nan Hayworth, R-Mount Kisco, returned from a week-long tour to Israel, during which she met with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres.
She said the visit and meetings reaffirmed for her the importance of the strategic relationship between the U.S. and Israel, a relationship she said has become increasingly important in the midst of the widespread political upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa.
“That strategic relationship is crucial to our own security,” Hayworth said, adding the push for democracy from Tunisia to Egypt to Libya and now Syria is something that should be both celebrated but also treated with caution.
“The caveat ”¦ is that we have to be exceedingly vigilant that the new governments of these countries, as they evolve, do not pose new threats.”
Hayworth was accompanied by 33 House Republican colleagues on the trip, which was sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation.
Dear Mr. President Obama, Gov. Cuomo
and all people who should protect your voters and the nation!
To allow immediately the extraction of natural gas at all places the DEC has already declared outside watersheds is the only way to save the future.
The economy hits rock bottom, the cure is in your hands but you gave the power to a group of environmental extremists. They want a perfect regulation but that is impossible. Not one kind of industry is without risks, not now and not in future. They are talking about environmental impacts caused by natural gas drilling. But they cannot exhibit any evidence, not one. They are just playing for time to find a basement for the own unfounded pronouncements and theses. They are talking about methane in aqueducts. Nobody ask first the person who has drilled the water well on the farm whether it has hit any methane shale. Just for example.
A lot of studies based on canards. That is a modern version of the inquisition.
They do not see more than the own tunnel straight ahead.
They will wait until the economic disaster is irreversible.
The U.S. economy is down.
Smaller companies will become insolvent, not just gas drillers.
A lot more people will be unemployed. Maybe some small town will die.
Infrastructures will be destroyed and the U.S. economy won’t be better.
Alone the current official plan to balance the debt won’t be sufficient, on the contrary.
Investors will be discouraged.
Every child knows that you cannot expect to get juice from a dry pressed fruit.
Certainly you can try other methods, from the other side or with more pressure, but it won’t work.
You have to find another fruit to get juice.
Your fruit is natural gas.
So just take back the responsibility from the DEC and take action, before it is too late.
Every day without natural gas drilling will be a month to repair the economic aftermath.