This Thursday, February 11th, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation will be having a meeting on the futures of the Hammond Hill and Yellow Barn State Forests in the Forum room at Tompkins-Cortland Community College. The room will open at 6:30pm and DEC staff will give a brief presentation about the unit management planning process at 7:00pm.
The easiest place to see the full press release is here, including an extra conversation between Mike Ludgate and the DEC about how gas drilling might be involved. A few key pieces I've already learned from the release and conversation:
These two state forests total more than 5,000 acres.
The area between the two forests is Valley Head Moraine, which splits the St.Lawrence watershed (via Cayuga Lake) from the Susquehanna watershed.
"At this point in time, Hammond Hill and Yellow Barn State Forests have not been nominated for oil and gas exploration or drilling, which is the first step in the lease process."
For these forests, "New York State shares the mineral rights with the federal government."
There's also a link to another recently completed plan to get a sense of what they look like.
Posted by simon at February 8, 2010 5:21 PM in Hammond Hill , Yellow Barn , natural areas