Action recommendations from Don Barber, Chair Tompkins County Council of Governments, Supervisor Town of Caroline:

June 15, 2009 7 PM
Broome Community College

Natural Gas Drilling and Local Government Responsibility to Protect the Health, Safety, and Well Being of its Citizens

In general local governments need to find ways to insert themselves into a process that the State has written us out of.

Potential action steps:

1. Develop overweight vehicle permits and driveway permits to protect your roads and create direct contact/negotiations with the drilling firm.
2. Identify and legislate critical environmental areas (CEA) within your municipality. DEC must then perform site specific SEQR review for permit applications which affect these CEA’s
3. Contact every State Legislator, Governor Paterson and his Deputy Secretary for the Environment, and the DEC Commissioner that we need:
   • Notification of permit applications and permits issued;
   • Emergency Services need contact info, hazardous material info, gas fire training;
   • Fuel production tax or Severance tax to create proper revenues to local governments – tax revenue to support DEC oversight program
4. Contact State Legislators requesting that ECL Section 23-0303 be amended so that local governments become involved agencies for SEQR review. And to support S8748 Natural Gas Drilling Prohibition Near Watershed
5. Contact your Congressperson and US Senator to support HR 2766 Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act of 2009.

Signed,
Don Barber
Chair Tompkins County Council of Governments, Supervisor Town of Caroline, 607-539-3395, supervisor@townofcaroline.org

Please Contact:

Pete Grannis, DEC Commissioner
625 Broadway, 14th floor
Albany, NY 12233
petegrannis@gw.dec.state.ny.us
(518)402-8540

Judith Enck, Deputy Sec. for the Environment
State Capital Executive Chambers
Room 245
Albany, NY 12224
judith.enck@chamber.state.ny.us
(518) 473-5442

Governor David A. Paterson
State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224
http://161.11.121.121/govemail
518-474-8390

There was a special TCCOG meeting held at the Ithaca Town Hall on March 30th by Municipal and Environmental Attorney Kimberlea Rea. The white paper for her talk is available by following the gas drilling link on the TCCOG website:
http://www.tompkins-co.org/legislature/TCCOG/

A video of the meeting can be found at http://tompco.net/tccog/gas.html