The Cornell Daily Sun

In 2000, Cornell University sold a plot of land to the City of Ithaca for one dollar. This plot of land — the Ithaca Falls and Gorge Trail region — has now cost the City millions in cleanup as high levels of lead contamination have been found there again and again.

A mobile home park in Ithaca built on a dump in the 1970s is undergoing investigation by the Department of Environmental Conservation to detect whether contaminants in the area’s groundwater are a potential hazard to residents’ health and a source of toxic leakage into the town water supply.

Ithacans spoke out against a proposed apartment complex at 7 Ridgewood Rd. at a Planning and Development Board meeting Tuesday evening, citing a lack of finalized plans and concern for the character of the historic neighborhood.

Over 900 students, faculty members and Ithacans have signed an online petition calling for a moratorium — a suspension of activity — on housing developments in the Cornell Heights Historic District.

At a debate over hydraulic fracturing on Thursday night at Cornell, six experts from various disciplines debated the practice’s implications for the environment and the economy in New York State and the U.S.

The speakers drew on their personal experiences with the controversial practice, which involves injecting chemicals and water into the ground at high velocity to extract natural gas.

John Holko, president of Lenape Resources, an oil and gas company that has drilled in New York State for 30 years, opened the debate by arguing in support fracking for what he called its economic and energy benefits.

We need to “move forward,” Halko said. “You can’t prevent the process, just mitigate issues.”

However, Walter Hang, founder of Toxic Targeting Services, a watchdog group for environmental violations, argued that brine, a liquid containing toxic metals produced in fracking wells, could potentially contaminate drinking water and have a negative impact on the environment.

Asked to address the potential economic effects that the fracking industry could have on New York State, Hang said that the economic success experienced by communities where fracking occurs would not be sustainable in the long-term.

No matter how you look at it, Hang said, “fracking hurts New York State.”

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is currently investigating oil found in Fall Creek, which likely originated at Cornell’s Arts and Sciences Alumni Building on 726 University Avenue.

DEC officials have told multiple media outlets that although the cause and source of contamination remains uncertain, the creek is safe.

As time runs out to comment on the draft of the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement for Oil and Gas Mining through horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing, Walter Hang, president of Toxics Targeting, made a passionate plea last night to kill the draft of the SGEIS altogether.