Phase I Environmental Database Services

JOHNSON CITY -- Area experts on natural gas drilling agree: New York's swath of the Marcellus Shale isn't likely to be tapped in 2012.

Panelists on both sides of the issue discussed the future of natural gas drilling in the Southern Tier at a roundtable discussion hosted by Press & Sun-Bulletin on Thursday at the Gannett Central N.Y. Production Facility.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced for the first time Thursday that hydraulic fracturing may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution. And predictably, the reaction in the Southern Tier fell along the long-held beliefs of environmentalists and pro-drillers.

Gov. David Paterson postponed it.

State Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton wants to slow it down.

Sen. Thomas Libous is for speeding it up.

Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo is torn between extremes.

Elected officials taking a position on Marcellus Shale development are facing strident demands from stakeholders who could become rich, go broke or possibly abandon hope, depending on Albany's response.

The state's depiction of a clean, tightly regulated natural gas industry just got a shot of muck in the eye.

As the debate over the merits of Marcellus Shale development reaches a crescendo, an Ithaca researcher has culled a list of 270 files documenting wastewater spills, well contamination, explosions, methane migration and ecological damage related to gas production in the state since 1979.

Twice a week, Dan Whalen drives a quarter-mile to fill 10-gallon jugs with drinking water from a tanker truck that's been supplying water to his neighborhood for more than two years.

Whalen, who lives in Hyde Park, Dutchess County, doesn't drink the water from his taps because the wells in his neighborhood were contaminated by one of the state's biggest spills of gasoline and MTBE, a highly toxic chemical additive. MTBE, or methyl tertiary butyl ether, is also a suspected carcinogen.