Marcellus Shale Press Coverage

NEW YORK -- Pressure on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo from both sides of his state's hydraulic fracturing fight flared up this week, with local groups and Binghamton Mayor Matthew Ryan having dialed up the heat with a letter to 1,000 Cuomo campaign contributors urging a ban.

The effor to hurt the Democratic governor where it counts -- in the pocketbook -- comes amid increasing lobbying from business groups in New York looking to win permits for the controversial drilling practice. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is now targeting the state in the run-up to this fall's elections and has plans for a number of ad buys in support of development.

On the other end are local towns stacked up against drilling and activists who fear Cuomo's rumored comporomise plan woul dwreck the state and leave broad swatchs of the Marcellus Shale open to production. Cuom has not made a decision on whether to end a moratorium against high-volume fracturing, but all signs point to him letting localities decide for themselves whether they want to drill.

In the letter to the campaign contributors, the groups New York Residents Against Drilling, Vestal Residents for Safe Energy and Chenango Community Actoin for Renewable Energy said any plans to allow fracking in certain towns, many of them in the state's Southern Tier along the border of Pennsylvania, would treat residents there "as second-class citizens and unfairly subject them to potentially irreparable hazards."

"Given your interest in New York's government affairs, we respectfully ask you to help safeguard our public's health and environment from the unprecedented pollution hazards posed by Marcellus Shale gas 'fracking.'" one version of the letter states.

The letter goes on to cit water pollution problems in the Pittsburgh area that were allegedly linked to fracking chemicals having leaked into local drinking supplies.

The strategy is perhaps more noteworthy for whom it targets, rather than that policy content of the letter, which repeats the gist of the fracking fight. The 1,000 recipients have given Cuomo $2,000 to $75,000 in individual donations out of their own pockets.

Included on the list are representatives from health care, law, accounting, film production, scrap recycling, casino and other firms.

Also on the list are Agnes Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art; Stephen Bing, founder of the Shangri-La business group; John Catsimatidis, owner of the grocery chain Gristeded Foods; Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump; and other New York luminaries.

Attempts to reach the invfluential 1,000 were not successful. The maestro of the campaign, Walter Hang, president of the group Toxics Targeting, said he's not surprised to hear those on the list would not return a reporter's call or email.

"Many of the contributors are high-level political operators. They would not speak on the record to you," Hang wrote in an email. "It is very important, however, that the governor know that activiest are reaching out to his biggest financial supporters."

Hang added that he has been told some people on the list have already called Cuomo. He said the effort is working "spectacularly well" with coverage from media outlets across the country.

Speaking yesterday on E&ETV's OnPoint, Karen Harbert, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy, said the group's shale development campaign is about unleashing economic potential for the kinds of local businesses that are crucial to New York's upstate economy, including hotels and restaurants.

"If you're really serious about getting the eoncomy back on track ... shale should be at the top of the list," she said.

In an effort to get the ear of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, opponents of hydraulic fracturing in the Southern Tier have penned a letter to 1,000 of his closest friends.

Binghamton Mayor Matthew T. Ryan and others who have concerns about the natural gas extraction technique gathered in front of Binghamton City Hall on Wednesday to discuss a letter they sent to the 1,000 largest contributors to Cuomo’s campaign fund.

“These are essentially many of the most prominent people in New York State politics,” said Walter Hang, an Ithaca activist and owner of environmental database firm Toxics Targeting. “We believe that this is going to force the governor to listen to many of the concerns that have been introduced up until now.”

The letter comes in response to a leaked report out of Albany last month indicating that officials are considering issuing an initial round of permits for hydrofracking only in pro-drilling communities within Broome, Tioga, Chenango, Chemung and Steuben counties.

Ryan said he signed on to the letter to urge Cuomo not to factor politics into his decisions on fracking, which has been on hold in New York since the state Department of Environmental Conservation began studying the technique in 2008.

“(Cuomo) originally said this was going to be based on science...and now all of the sudden he’s floating the idea of having a place where we’re going to try this technology out,” he said. “I don’t think that those two things are really compatible.”

The one-page letter sent to Cuomo’s donors states that the proposal “would treat Southern Tier residents as second class citizens and unfairly subject them to potentially irreparable hazards.” Along with Ryan and Hang, it is co-signed by leaders of three Southern Tier anti-drilling groups.

In recent months, at least nine of Broome County’s 16 town boards have passed identical resolutions expressing confidence that DEC “will develop a program that allows development of our natural gas resources to proceed in a safe, responsible, and competitive manner."

Those resolutions have stirred some measure of controversy as well. At a separate news conference Wednesday, five opponents of natural gas drilling from the towns of Windsor, Barker, Sanford and Triangle argued that they don’t represent the opinion of the majority of residents in those communities.

This article also appeared in:

• Elmira Star-Gazette
• Press & Sun Bulletin