Living in Dryden

Water transforms Dryden SEC forum on water

Well, that certainly wasn't what I expected.

The Dryden Safe Energy Coalition sponsored a public forum on "Water and Energy Development" at the Dryden Fire Hall tonight. It was supposed to include WHCU host Dave Vieser as moderator, Mike Atchie of Chesapeake Energy, and possibly someone from the Independent Oil and Gas Association of NY, as well as Bill Kappel of the US Geological Service and Chip Northrup, a real estate investor who was there as the anti-fracking spokesperson.

Apparently the weather - I've had 2.5 inches of rain here today - kept Dave Vieser on the air for WHCU, and Atchie and the IOGA spokesperson away from Dryden. The Dryden SEC didn't cancel the forum, but many (not all) of the Dryden SEC folks left, leaving the floor to the speakers who did arrive.

Update: Thanks to Mary Ann Sumner in comments - it sounds like I missed some earlier drama, though I thought I got there early:

DSEC most emphatically DID cancel the event. But they could not persuade the fire department to close the building. Neptune president, Dan Tier said: It's a public education event. If people want to stay to hear the speakers who are here, that's okay.

Event organizer, Ron Szymansky repeatedly announced that the DSEC event was cancelled and DSEC did not endorse the continuation of the meeting.

Crowd milling before start of meeting.

Some people left early, and more people left after the 'center position' USGS Bill Kappel spoke, but others arrived and the room pretty much remained standing room only throughout the talks. The questions at the end were nearly universally concerns about the arrival of drilling rather than supporting its arrival.

Geologist Bill Kappel speaks.

It definitely wasn't what I expected, but it raised a lot of questions I need to look into. On the environmental side, both Northrup and Kappel emphasized that the activity on the surface was a greater environmental risk than the actual fracking below, though well casing issues in particular could cause problems underground. Water coming from underground - both fracking fluid flowback water and the brine that's natural there - raises difficult disposal issues, to put it very mildly.

One of the points that Chip Northrup made over and over again was that while we may think of New York as a state with a strong regulatory tradition, we lack a lot of basic legal protections that states with more intense histories of drilling, notably Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, have. I'm not sure if it's because of our history with modest amounts of oil and gas in the western part of the state, or because Albany can't get its act together.

The next Dryden SEC forum will be September 21st, on "The Law and Energy".

Update: Here's the Ithaca Journal coverage of the event.