Press & Sun-Bulletin

ALBANY — A top Senate Republican on Thursday said he will fight to keep a potential moratorium on hydraulic fracturing from getting a vote in the state Senate.

Senate Deputy Majority Leader Thomas Libous, R-Binghamton, said his goal is to “make sure no (moratorium) bill passes the Senate.”

Libous, a staunch fracking supporter whose district sits within the gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation, said he doesn’t want to see the issue on the Senate floor for a vote.

“I’m going to try to make sure that it doesn’t,” he said Thursday. “I feel that strongly on that issue.”

BINGHAMTON — Opponents of hydrofracking in New York are asking for a say in the state’s review of its public health impacts.

Binghamton Mayor Matthew T. Ryan and other opponents of natural gas drilling on Tuesday called for formal public participation and other revisions to the New York State Department of Health’s review of hydrofracking.

“The problem with that entire proceeding is it is being undertaken completely in secret,” said Walter Hang, president of Ithaca-based Toxics Targeting. “There has never been a piece of paper released to the public about the scope of the health review, about how it’s being undertaken, about what its critical issues are.”

More than 1,000 drilling opponents, including several public officials, have signed on to a letter asking for formal written notice of what the Department of Health’s review involves, a minimum of 30 days of written review and comment on the review and at least one public hearing where interested parties can testify about how the review should be conducted.

“If it’s ever going to be done in our state, we need to make sure that there’s integrity in the process,” Ryan said Tuesday.

ALBANY — State Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, D-Ithaca, joined with 65 lawmakers to support putting hydrofracking’s health review on hold, so there can be public review and comment on the process.

Lifton called the Department of Health review "unacceptably inadequate.”

ALBANY — New York regulators may have to signal a decision on hydraulic fracturing by Feb. 13 if they hope to meet an end-of-the-month deadline for finalizing a set of proposed regulations.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation faces a Feb. 27 deadline to either finalize the planned hydrofracking rules or allow them to expire.

ALBANY — More than 1,000 protesters lined a pathway on Wednesday, chanting and wielding signs as lawmakers and lobbyists made their way to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s third State of the State address.

Cuomo’s 80-minute speech, however, had nary a mention of the topic they were protesting: hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.

A Binghamton-area Assemblywoman penned a letter to the state’s top environmentalregulator Wednesday, urging him to call a meeting of the state’s High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel — a once-touted committee of interested parties that hasn’t met in nearly a year.

Steuben County is home to 619 unplugged and abandoned gas, oil and other wells that are a threat to public health and safety, according to the head of an Ithaca-based environmental database firm.

Another 41 of these wells are in Chemung County, 46 in Tompkins County, 11 in Broome County and seven in Tioga County, said Walter Hang, president of Toxics Targeting Inc.

BINGHAMTON — Years after an Allegany County family found crude oil pouring from its showerhead in 2008, they still don’t feel comfortable drinking their water.

A tank of brine continuously pours contaminants into a western New York lagoon. Across the state, nearly 5,000 abandoned oil and gas wells haven’t been properly capped.

Walter Hang, president of an Ithaca-based environmental database firm, Toxics Targeting, on Wednesday released a set of documents he says indicate shortcomings in the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s regulation of conventional oil and gas drilling, and lead to questions about whether the agency is equipped to regulate hydrofracking.

BINGHAMTON — Asking voters to consider November’s election “a referendum on reckless drilling,” Democratic congressional candidate Dan Lamb on Tuesday sought to push the debate over hydraulic fracturing to the forefront of his campaign against incumbent Rep. Richard Hanna.