With the prospect of a large-scale gas drilling project in Ithaca, many residents have voiced concern about such a project’s potential environmental and health impacts. Despite the potential profits from leasing land to gas companies for natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation, residents have vocally raised concerns.

While there are huge profits to be made from leasing land to gas companies for natural gas drilling, many residents who live atop the Marcellus Shale formation, including those in Ithaca, fear the damaging effect that such drilling will have on the environment and their health.

The shale formation runs from Ohio and West Virginia to the northeast into Pennsylvania and southern New York, and is estimated to contain between 168 trillion to 516 trillion cubic feet of natural gas throughout the entire formation, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

According to the website for The Marcellus Accountability Project for Tompkins County, Cornell owns 11,000 acres, or four percent, of the land in Tompkins County alone, in addition to owning the mineral rights on 420,000 additional acres of land in other parts of the U.S. The DEC states on its website that New York State uses 1.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas annually.

Recent technological innovations including the development of new gas extraction capabilities like horizontal drilling and hydraulic-fracturing (“hydrofracking”) have spawned recent interest in the Marcellus Shale — before the advent of these technologies, it would have been expensive and difficult to tap into the shale’s natural gas resources. In addition, the Marcellus Shale's close proximity to the natural gas markets in New York, New Jersey and New England would reduce transport costs when the gas hits the market.

However, many residents of areas near the Marcellus Shale are concerned about the environmental, social and economic impacts of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.

As a result of these worries, the DEC has drafted the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement on the Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program. According to the DEC’s website, the purpose of this document is to expand on the topics related to the issuance of well permits for high-volume hydraulic fracturing.

This document also supplements the current Generic Environmental Impact Statement on Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Regulatory Program, which was released in 1988 and then again in 1992. That document analyzed the environmental, economic and social impacts of oil, gas and solution mining. In his presentation at the public information session held last Thursday regarding the draft of the SGEIS, David Kay, senior extension associate with the Community & Rural Development Institute, indicated that the purpose of the SGEIS is to evaluate the environmental impacts of proposed drilling in New York State.

The SGEIS was undertaken because it seeks to evaluate environmental impacts that were not discussed in the GEIS, specifically the impacts of horizontal drilling and high-volume hydrofracking that will be used to extract gas from the Marcellus Shale.

The DEC has currently placed a moratorium on natural gas drilling, awaiting the conclusion of the comment period on the draft of the SGEIS. Currently, people can comment on the present draft of the SGEIS up through Dec. 31.

Kay’s reports mention that the DEC found there were seven areas that were frequently brought up as points of concern: land use and natural resource use without compensation, visual resources and assessment requirement, environmental assessment form and site permit conditions, access roads as part of the project, reasons for including the proposed regulations in the GEIS, surface/mineral owner lease conflicts and soil as a public natural resource.

Though the draft SGEIS claims to provide mitigating measures to offset some of the damages caused by natural gas drilling, many Ithaca residents still have concerns. They contend that the draft SGEIS does not do enough to protect them from the risks and inconveniences associated with the potential horizontal gas drilling and hydrofracking.

For instance, the draft of the SGEIS states that each well will require a three acre site per 40 acres and require five million gallons of water. Drilling would also occur 24 hours a day for four to five weeks per well. Each well site would also require 1,200 truck trips.

Helen Slottje, an environmental attorney in the area, said at the public info session last Thursday night, “The draft of the SGEIS is more about what it doesn’t contain than what it does.”

The Tompkins County Commissioner of Planning Ed Marx’s, added in his presentation on Thursday, “Any cumulative impacts [could be] better handled at the local level, but we don’t have any power to regulate outside of the roads.”

“The implementation, enforcement and monitoring mechanisms are often unclear,” he added. He also explained that the draft of the SGEIS calls for a lot of self-policing, and the information in the report is based largely on industry data, which may be skewed to the gas and oil companies’ favor.

Some of the chief concerns of residents include the transport of water to and from drilling sites, methane migration, water contamination, chemical spills and fires.

The Ithaca Journal reported that New York State has had past issues with chemical spills. This could pose an additional problem to the issues already posed by Ithaca residents. For instance, The Journal stated that in Freedom, N.Y., “12 families were evacuated in 1999 after gas moved through a fault and surfaced in a neighborhood 1.5 miles away, bubbling up in ponds, ditches, barns, basements and yards.” The accident was attributed to an equipment failure on a drill rig. No penalties were incurred by anyone, according to The Journal.

“As a child of the ‘60s, I thought I lost my capacity to be shocked,” said Linda Lavine, a resident of the town of Dryden and local landowner of more than 100 acres. She said that many of her neighbors have already leased their land to gas companies. She said that because her neighbors have leased their lands to the gas companies, the integrity of her land has been compromised.

Despite the complaints, there is a huge profit to be derived from leasing land to a gas company. Lavine, who had received an offer a few years ago to lease her land, believes that the gas companies are currently offering thousands of dollars per acre.

Ultimately, many people are angry that they may be forced to include their land as part of a spacing unit, if at least 60 percent of the land area around them is leased, according to The Marcellus Accountability Project. A spacing unit in N.Y. for the Marcellus Shale refers to 40 to 640 acres, where companies have obtained gas leases for at least 60 percent of the land area.

The Marcellus Accountability Project also indicates that there is an 11 percent land area with a gas lease in Ithaca.

Linda Grace-Kobas, a former senior communications director at Cornell, said, “I live in the town of Ithaca. It’s a quiet residential area. But there is land that is leased less than a mile away from my house. I’m very concerned about the environmental impacts of proposed drilling. … Most people in Ithaca don’t realize [the] number of leases that have already been obtained by gas companies all around the area close to the lake, Route 89 and Ulysses.”

Today, the University Faculty Senate is expected to vote on a resolution that, if passed, would ask the Cornell administration to “share the decision to lease lands with faculty, staff, students and alumni.” The Resolution also calls for the administration to spearhead efforts for sensible drilling regulations at the state level.

Simeon Moss ’73, deputy University spokesman, said Cornell has not signed any contract and is not considering leasing any at this time.

“Any consideration we might make in the future about gas drilling leases involving our property would be contingent upon the proposed process meeting or exceeding EPA guidelines or similar new state DEC guidelines,” Moss said.

He added, “Right now any future decision of leasing land would be made by the University’s executive leadership.”

On Nov. 19, there will be a public hearing on the draft of the SGEIS at the State Theater. The public is invited to make verbal and written comments on the draft.