Dear Editor:
I and others have attended a number of Hancock Town Board meetings over the past year or more to pressure our Town Board to become more engaged in the issues surrounding gas drilling in our area. I can only say I am astonished by the blase attitude of officials who seem to have no knowledge, interest or curiosity about the known impact of gas drilling. I gather none have attended public DEC hearings of which there have been many in our surrounding area. They have taken the gas companies’ propaganda hook, line and sinker!
Considering most claim to support small government and home rule, when it comes to the gas issue it’s all the way with the Feds, the State and the largest, most powerful corporations in America. They scoff at the concerns of “tree-hugging-environmentalist-liberal-outsider-flatlanders,” forgetting that without us fifty percent of the Town’s tax base would disappear.
But some in our community are very concerned about the issue of hydrofracking and gas extraction. Upwards of 60% of New York State and Pennsylvania has been leased already. There have been literally hundreds of accidents from this extraction process in the 30 or more states that already are involved. I understand there maybe as many as 50,000 wells installed between Hancock and Port Jervis.
Of course the gas companies and the DEC claim there has been nary a problem, just like BP did at the beginning of the Gulf Oil spill. One should understand that the DEC is a handmaiden to the industry, there to streamline regulation, and not protect us or the environment. There are less than 20 inspectors to cover the many thousands of gas wells slated for our region and their mandate is not to oversee gas extraction whilst in progress nor measure the amount of gas extracted.
On Monday, June 7 in Walton, I saw a new documentary film “Gas land,” produced by a local filmmaker, a film that has won awards and will show on HBO June 21. The revelations are shocking and astounding. But what is more astounding is that local officials in Hancock and other towns seem naive and mesmerized by gas companies’ promises of substantial amounts of money for some land owners and a few local businesses when this has not been the case so far in other communities; they seem to have no idea of the devastation that awaits.
When I asked Mayor Calvin Tillman, the mayor of Dish Texas who visited this area last winter, what the economic benefits of gas drilling had been in his area, he told me that any income advantages his town received were off-set by the repairs and rehabilitation required following the so-called gas bonanza the gas companies promised. In other words, whilst a few large landowners made out, the rest of the citizens saw no benefit whatsoever. Not only did they receive no financial benefit but many suffered illnesses hitherto unknown, caused by polluted water, air and the stress of 24/7 drilling conducted literally in their backyards in some cases.
Property values plummeted and unlike those who received large cash settlements for leasing land, most of whom left because of the
untenable living conditions that followed in the wake of drilling, the common folk were forced to grin and bear this insult, as we will be.
If one cares to research this issue you will find that communities
which have experienced gas drilling have been inundated by an industrial activity that has poisoned their water, sickened many of their residents and their animals, essentially rendered their land useless and now it’s happening right here.
I urge you to listen and encourage Town officials to listen and learn from a radio program where filmmaker Josh Fox, who visited more than 30 states, and journalist Abraham Lustgarten, tell the real story—not the company propaganda that has proven so effective in anesthetizing those whose job it is to protect us.
The program begins talking about BP and the oil spill but soon gets to the issue at hand. Here is the link:
www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13
We are so tired of hearing “there is nothing we can do… we have no
control… it’s not up to us.”Tell that to the folks whose wells will be poisoned, whose lives will be become untenable, whose property
values will plummet while a few landowners head south with pockets full of money since they won’t want to stick around while the rest of us suffer in what will soon be an industrial landscape in one of the most pristine areas in this country. And water. What about the water?
Andrew Leslie Phillips
Hancock Permaculture Center
www.hancockpermaculture.org
