- Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Issue » Hydrofracking
While the land in the City of Ithaca is not suitable for hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting natural gas from the ground, the process may be used in surrounding areas and raises concerns about the safety of the city’s shared water supply.
Clairborne: Fracking is a hazardous concern and the city should work with Caroline and Dryden to protect the water supply
“I do support the ban, however, in the city the ban is largely symbolic, but I believe that as mayor, I would want to see us really sitting down at the table with the leadership in Caroline and Dryden and really looking at how we help them protect their areas because Six Mile Creek, which is our water source, comes out of there. If they’re not successful, then our water source is at risk. They may not have drills set up around the city, but the drills out there will have the same hazardous concerns. The other thing about the ban is education — having people understand why hyrdrofracking is a concern right now. Because we have a municipal water supply, it’s not really on every one’s radar, and I’m one of those people. It wasn’t on mine. But over the course of the past year, I’ve learned more about it, and it’s pretty freaky. It’s kind of scary when you talk about contamination.”
“I do support the ban, however, in the city the ban is largely symbolic, but I believe that as mayor, I would want to see us really sitting down at the table with the leadership in Caroline and Dryden and really looking at how we help them protect their areas because Six Mile Creek, which is our water source, comes out of there. If they’re not successful, then our water source is at risk. They may not have drills set up around the city, but the drills out there will have the same hazardous concerns. The other thing about the ban is education — having people understand why hyrdrofracking is a concern right now. Because we have a municipal water supply, it’s not really on every one’s radar, and I’m one of those people. It wasn’t on mine. But over the course of the past year, I’ve learned more about it, and it’s pretty freaky. It’s kind of scary when you talk about contamination.”
Kelly: Gas-rich areas should prepare for fracking, not fight it
“It’s an astonishing waste of vanishingly rare time. It’s another example of the sort of political theater that’s going to cost us in the long run and isn’t in the city’s interest, and the reason is there isn’t one square inch of frackable land in the entire City of Ithaca, but what there is, is a dependence on water that has to come to us from Caroline and Dryden. Fracking is coming. People can kid themselves all they want, but it is coming. It’s an economic inevitability, and not only that, I think it’s pretty soon to be a national security inevitability because I think the Middle East is going to blow up. We’re sitting on the edge of an enormous natural gas supply. The U.S. is going to be the Saudi Arabia of natural gas in about five years. Development of that is already happening — it’s already affecting Horseheads. We need to be looking now at what the impact is going to be on the city and starting to prepare for that. It’s going to affect housing, which already, as you’ve heard, is tighter than a tick as we say down home. Oil workers come in, and they rent up space, and they have tons of money to spend. I grew up in the oil patch — I know what that’s like. And we’re not talking about two or three months. When this development starts, it’s going to be a matter of years, the upside is there is going to be huge numbers of jobs not far from us, we’ll get some economic benefits after that. We need to be thinking about that, but we really, really need to be thinking in more clear ways about how we protect the safety of our water systems. Thanks to some good work that Wade [Wykstra] did and some other people, the city water plant will not ever be forced to accept water from the sort of drained out water from the fracking process. It distresses me to see so many people carrying on about how the city should be banning fracking, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, and that’s going to help us exactly how?’”
“It’s an astonishing waste of vanishingly rare time. It’s another example of the sort of political theater that’s going to cost us in the long run and isn’t in the city’s interest, and the reason is there isn’t one square inch of frackable land in the entire City of Ithaca, but what there is, is a dependence on water that has to come to us from Caroline and Dryden. Fracking is coming. People can kid themselves all they want, but it is coming. It’s an economic inevitability, and not only that, I think it’s pretty soon to be a national security inevitability because I think the Middle East is going to blow up. We’re sitting on the edge of an enormous natural gas supply. The U.S. is going to be the Saudi Arabia of natural gas in about five years. Development of that is already happening — it’s already affecting Horseheads. We need to be looking now at what the impact is going to be on the city and starting to prepare for that. It’s going to affect housing, which already, as you’ve heard, is tighter than a tick as we say down home. Oil workers come in, and they rent up space, and they have tons of money to spend. I grew up in the oil patch — I know what that’s like. And we’re not talking about two or three months. When this development starts, it’s going to be a matter of years, the upside is there is going to be huge numbers of jobs not far from us, we’ll get some economic benefits after that. We need to be thinking about that, but we really, really need to be thinking in more clear ways about how we protect the safety of our water systems. Thanks to some good work that Wade [Wykstra] did and some other people, the city water plant will not ever be forced to accept water from the sort of drained out water from the fracking process. It distresses me to see so many people carrying on about how the city should be banning fracking, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, and that’s going to help us exactly how?’”
Myrick: Ithaca should support its neighboring municipalities to ban fracking
“The city should support the ban on hydrofracking. We’re going to have to support the municipalities around us because they’re the ones that are likely to see the drilling, but of course it will affect our quality of life here in the city. We’ll see increased traffic, increased housing demand and increased pollution, so as mayor, I’d do what I continue to do. I took a day off the campaign a couple of weeks ago, and I took a few volunteers and myself to Caroline to work for some of the political candidates up there. Why did we leave our own region to go up and canvass when we have our own election to win here? It’s because the candidates we were working with are anti-fracking, and the people they’re running against are pro-fracking. If they had their way, they would allow fracking in the town. Why does that matter to us in the City of Ithaca? Our water goes directly through Caroline; the water we drink comes through their village, and should anything happen to that water source from a natural gas drilling, we would all pay the price. As mayor, I’d continue to support those municipalities and their fight to restrict natural gas drilling until it can be done safely.”
“The city should support the ban on hydrofracking. We’re going to have to support the municipalities around us because they’re the ones that are likely to see the drilling, but of course it will affect our quality of life here in the city. We’ll see increased traffic, increased housing demand and increased pollution, so as mayor, I’d do what I continue to do. I took a day off the campaign a couple of weeks ago, and I took a few volunteers and myself to Caroline to work for some of the political candidates up there. Why did we leave our own region to go up and canvass when we have our own election to win here? It’s because the candidates we were working with are anti-fracking, and the people they’re running against are pro-fracking. If they had their way, they would allow fracking in the town. Why does that matter to us in the City of Ithaca? Our water goes directly through Caroline; the water we drink comes through their village, and should anything happen to that water source from a natural gas drilling, we would all pay the price. As mayor, I’d continue to support those municipalities and their fight to restrict natural gas drilling until it can be done safely.”
Wykstra: The city should stand with neighboring localities to ban high-volume, horizontal hydrofracturing “You couldn’t drill a well in the city now — it wouldn’t be legal. That being said, I think we should still go ahead and put a ban on it in order to band together with surrounding municipalities because there is more power in that unity. We’re talking about high-volume, horizontal hydrofracturing. There are other types of frack-drilling, like vertical, that don’t involve the same introduction of chemicals or volume of water that have been going on for decades. The City of Ithaca should issue a ban on it even though we don’t have to. It’s good to band with the other communities. I’m more concerned about the town of Caroline. I’d like the city to support the town of Caroline in issuing its ban — that’s very important.”
