The town of Newfield held an "information" meeting on how it was preparing for the upcoming gas drilling. I did not attend and summarize the words of a neighbor who did: forgive the melodrama but cash strapped towns will do little more than pick out the floral arrangements for the funeral of your farm, your well, your meadow or the stream in your back yard. Seriously, the towns position is that drilling is a done deal and if your aquifer gets a few lingering nasty chemicals, well, nobody is really to blame because they were not purposely trying to poison you...that is the official position [I would call it a bent over and legs spread position].
Personally, I imagine the town bookkeepers have already opened bank accounts for the much needed revenues they hope the drillers will provide. If you use water, you are a stake holder. If you merely own land so that you can milk it for the money on which you fancy your entire being subsists then you are a stake holder with the opposing interest, aligned with Exxon etc [what?! did you not know that the worlds most obscenely profitable company has been buying up gas exploration outfits with obscure stock exchange symbols like XOT?]. Oversimplifying issues is a fault of all sides in this shale gashole dustp-up but this is going to get painfully simple for those of us who live in rural settings and depend literally and directly upon the quality of the environment for our livelihoods and health...but more acres and fewer votes or dollars never wins. Even if you hold land for which gas rights were never sold, you have no protection from drilling that bends at some depth and heads under your ground, or that performs fracturing right at the property line and thereby opens the stone under YOUR feet to leak out its methane and leach in "accidental" amounts of fracking fluids. If you own wood lots and get approached to sell off your "threatened" wealth in ash, hemlock or other species plagued by the warming climate, ask a premium and get in writing the uses to which your wood will be put. Fracking fluids may not be disposed of in land fills when in the fluid sate, so says the regulation...so in addition to buying up massive amounts of clean water, the drillers are buying stadiums full of chipped wood to absorb the fluid so that it can be dumped in land fills. YOU ARE ALL STAKE HOLDERS IF YOU LIVE ANY WERE NEAR BY. DO NOT ASK FOR WHOM THE WELL TOLLS! Urge any opposition organization where you have any voice to join forces with others. How many lawyers did YOU send to the state house to make your case???? -- freedom is not more important than fairness and much easier to fake. _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins Questions about the list? ask [email protected] free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
