I'd been wondering for a long time why local supporters of gas drilling had turned into such great fans of New York's Department of Environmental Conservation. Over the years I'd heard plenty of complaints about how the DEC was another terrible government agency out to cause trouble for private property owners on behalf of terrible environmentalists. When it came to gas drilling, though, the DEC suddenly achieved sainthood. Pro-fracking speaker after speaker at public conversations on hydrofracking lauded the great work they did on gas drilling regulation.
It's less mysterious now that I find the agency sharing updates on the SGEIS with industry while the rest of us wait in the dark, and when it seems that someone with the same name as the DEC Division of Mineral Resources head signed a petition denying global warming. (There aren't enough details to know if it's actually the same person, but that name definitely appears in the state-by-state list for New York.)
It's going to be a long summer. As Tom Wilber of Shale Gas Review put it:
Posted by simon at July 2, 2012 10:18 PM in energy , politics (state)New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's attempt to turn down the heat on the shale gas controversy has only made it hotter.