THE TIME FOR DISCUSSION IS OVER – NOW IT’S TIME FOR ACTION
All of the public hearings on the New York State DEC’s Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (DSEGEIS) for Oil and Gas Mining are completed. Individuals and advocates spoke out loud and clear that the document is wholly inadequate in its breath and woefully flawed in its conclusions and provisions. Mountainkeeper and many other organizations see no alternative but to petition the DEC to throw out the document and create a new draft that would protect the state’s most valuable resources.
As clearly as our message was stated at the hearings and in the press, it is not enough! We need to impact the one person who has the power to stop drilling and prevent the potential catastrophe. That person is Governor Paterson.
Here is what we’re doing and what you can do to have impact.
Letter to Governor Paterson
Mountainkeeper, NRDC and a broad coalition of 26 environmental organizations have written a letter to Governor Paterson telling him that the DSGEIS is fatally flawed and must be abandoned.
Below are highlights from our letter – for the full text of the letter click here.
- It is critically important to protect the State’s drinking water supplies and other irreplaceable resources that are essential to public health protection and the state’s long-term economic prosperity.
- The use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have led to known or suspected contamination in water supplies across the country, including right next door in Pennsylvania.
- We ask that Governor Paterson direct the DEC to set aside its current draft document and commit to a twelve month moratorium on the issuance of any new permits for hydraulic fracturing in New York State.
- We ask that Governor Paterson request that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region II convene a panel of experts on water quality to analyze proposals for hydraulic fracturing in New York State and assess the potential impacts of such activities on water resources in New York, utilizing the precautionary principle as the foundation for its analysis.
- We ask that Governor Paterson direct DEC to develop a new draft environmental impact statement that contains all appropriate and legally-required analyses and to propose a comprehensive rule-making package that would accompany the new draft and that would be designed to fully insure the protection of the state’s most valuable water and other natural resources.
- We firmly believe that it would be an error of historic proportions if the DEC were to push through an industrial hydraulic fracturing gas drilling plan in anything like its present form.
Sign a Petition to the Governor
Catskill Mountainkeeper asks you join with thousands of others who have signed a petition created by Walter Hang, demanding that Governor Paterson withdraw DEC’s Draft Document and replace it with regulations that ensure that all environmental impacts from drilling are addressed. Walter Hang is a researcher and President of Toxic Targeting who recently reported that there have been 270 accidents related to gas drilling in New York State since 1979.
We urge you to click here to sign this petition.
Send letters to Governor Paterson
Write to Governor Paterson, ask your friends to write to Governor Paterson and tell him that allowing gas drilling to proceed under the current regulations would be disastrous for New York State.
Click here to send a letter to Governor Paterson. For suggested text click here.
We only have 30 days until the end of the public comment period on December 31, 2009. This has been a long and hard fight, but the payoff is in what we all do from here on in. With the hearings over, there is risk that many concerned and dedicated people will lose the motivation to stay in the fight, however, now is the moment when effort is the most needed.
Please keep writing and keep spreading the word. Gas drilling under the current scenario will bring disastrous results to the Catskills, New York City and the entire State.
Here Are Other Things That You Can Do
- Email and call your elected member of congress, your US Senator, your State senator and Assemblyperson. Click here to find out who your representative are and how to contact them
- Write a letter to the editor of your local paper
- Pass this alert on to colleagues so they can take action
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