The decision about whether the Ithaca wastewater treatment plant should accept digested animal carcass waste from Cornell University has been put off for another month.

At a Wednesday afternoon meeting, the multi-municipality committee that oversees the publicly owned plant agreed to delay a vote until its next session, July 14, because two of its members -- Ithaca mayor Carolyn Peterson and Ithaca Town Board member Pat Leary -- were unable to attend.

The difficult geology on Ithaca's South Hill makes it virtually impossible to actually remove toxic contamination from beneath neighborhoods, according to staff from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The DEC hosted a public meeting Thursday night at Ithaca Town Hall, attended by roughly 25 people, to present and answer questions on the agency's Proposed Remedial Action Plan for the neighborhood north and downhill from Emerson Power Transmission.

The message was loud and clear, state officials said: neighbors of Clinton West Plaza want the site cleaned to the highest residential standard -- not the restricted commercial standard currently proposed.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation hosted a meeting Wednesday night to explain and answer questions about its draft cleanup plan for Clinton West. Historic leaks of dry-cleaning fluid left a pool of contaminated groundwater at the southwest corner of the property, between Clinton West Laundry and homes along North Titus Avenue.

ITHACA -- An accidental release at Cornell University on Friday morning sent 4,300 gallons of digested animal carcass waste into the city's sewer system.

Cornell asserts that the treated waste was neither infectious nor hazardous, and the city's Superintendent of Public Works said he didn't expect the waste to cause problems at the municipally owned Ithaca Wastewater Treatment plant -- though Cornell does not have a permit to discharge to Ithaca's plant.

The commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation has asserted that reports of accidents related to natural gas drilling in New York have been overblown and taken out of context.

In a letter to Assemblyman William Parment, D-150th, a member of the Environmental Conservation committee, DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis said that of the 270 incidents highlighted by an Ithaca researcher, more than half have nothing to do with natural gas drilling -- and they occurred while the DEC was overseeing 10,400 wells.

An unannounced spot check by the federal Environmental Protection Agency found that the Village of Cayuga Heights' wastewater treatment plant was out of compliance with some regulations tied to its discharge permit -- though within acceptable limits on what the plant discharged to Cayuga Lake.

The EPA conducted the check last October, but sent the results of its inspection to the village just last week. The village provided the documents to this newspaper Wednesday in response to a Freedom Of Information Law request.

The state's assertion that natural gas production is a clean, well-regulated industry has been called into question by memos from a health official working in drilling communities in western New York.

William T. Boria, a water resources specialist at the Chautauqua County Health Department, reported his agency has received more than 140 complaints related to water pollution or gas migration associated with nearby drilling operations. The cases correspond to a time when the industry took root in western New York decades ago, according to Boria, and continue through the last few years.

"Those complaints that were recorded are probably just a fraction of the actual problems that occurred," Boria stated in a 2004 memo summarizing the issue. County health officials tabulated information on 53 of the cases from 1983 to 2008 on a spreadsheet, including one where a home was evacuated after the water well exploded.

A contentious plan to locate a wastewater disposal site in the Steuben County town of Pulteney is officially dead, although the company that proposed the project is leaving the door open for similar facilities in the future.

Chesapeake Energy sought approval to convert an abandoned natural gas well on the west side of Keuka Lake into a site that would accept more than 180,000 gallons of wastewater a day.

In Ithaca and Tompkins County, the conversation about natural gas development has been dominated by those opposed to hydro-fracturing and concerned about New York State's environmental regulations.

The year started with just a relatively few activists from Shaleshock, a citizens' coalition concerned about horizontal hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale, presenting at town meetings, writing letters to the editor, and trying to draw attention to an issue that was still under many people's radar.

An Ithaca environmental activist and 6,000 other individuals and organizations asked the governor Tuesday to withdraw the state's newly drafted regulations on natural gas drilling, saying the state's entire regulatory framework needs to be strengthened before more drilling occurs.