Residents urge fracking ban

WARWICK — Residents as well as members of Sustainable Warwick and Community 2000 have asked the Town Board to exercise home rule and ban hydraulic fracturing in Warwick.

The practice of extracting natural gas from shale basins deep within the earth is commonly referred to as fracking although it bears little resemblance to the process of 50 years ago. These days fracking consists of drilling horizontally, clustering well pads together and using high volumes of water.

Citing myriad public health and safety concerns, residents believe a ban is the town’s best option and can always be reversed in the future.

“If you do nothing now and fracking comes, that can’t be reversed,” Geoffrey Howard, the chairman of Sustainable Warwick, said during the Town Board’s regular monthly meeting on Oct. 11.

40 bans

Last month, more than 150 residents attended a forum on fracking that featured opposing points of view from John Conrad of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York and Carl Arnold of the Sierra Club’s Gas Drilling Task Force. Some who attended the forum were among those residents urging the board to join the 40 municipalities that have banned fracking, including Albany and Syracuse.

More than 100 municipalities have moratoriums on fracking and 86 are considering prohibiting it.

Although the Marcellus Shale Formation in Pennsylvania and West Virginia is better known for fracking activities, large swaths of Warwick and Orange County sit atop the Utica Shale Formation, which “has the potential to become an enormous natural gas resource,” said Warwick resident and professor of physics and environmental science William Makofske, who quoted from a study commissioned by the Tompkins County Council of Governments.

“To ban it would be a no lose position for you if you have the courage to do it (and) if we don’t, we have unimaginable amounts to lose,” said Michael Jay, who said he is distrustful of the industry given its exemptions to federal public health laws. Jay is a resident of neighboring Chester and member of Community 2000.

“I don’t think the (oil and gas) industry has our best interest at heart,” he said.

Private property

Mary Makofske said she was outraged to discover that the New York State Senate passed a bill in 2005 providing for the compulsory integration of private property for fracking. Compulsory integration forces adjacent landowners into gas leases once a certain percentage of them are signed voluntarily.

“I can’t imagine anyone here would find that an acceptable situation,” she said.

“A growing number of banks won’t give new mortgage loans on homes with gas leases and [some insurers] won’t cover damage from fracking,” added Makofske, who believes the board should heed these warning signals and ban fracking.

Warwick’s master plan presents a vision of growth that has the least impact upon the environment.

“I looked out over our beautiful valley and I said to myself this fracking process would be totally incompatible with our comprehensive plan,” said Makofske, who wants to preserve local agriculture and tourism. “Fracking could collapse an economy that people have worked so hard to build and sustain.”

Clock ticking

Although Gov. Andrew Cuomo has yet to make a decision about fracking, residents want the board to ban fracking now on the premise that the board could lift the ban at any point.

Alice McMechen wants the ban because she is concerned that natural gas is not as clean of an alternative to coal as the oil and gas industry would like people to believe.

Next steps include the town’s conservation board studying the issue and reporting back to the supervisor and board before the end of the year, said chairman Dan Duthie, who believes the industry will appeal the fracking bans and expects the state’s health department to involve itself in the issue.



By Birgit Bogler