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| Candor, NY |
Last month two towns to the west of me, Van Etten and
Spencer, NY passed resolutions stating that the towns supported gas drilling.
Van Etten’s resolution was simple – a single sentence stating that the town has
“decided to allow gas drilling in the Town of Van Etten.” Spencer’s is
lengthier, commending the state’s leadership in developing a “comprehensive”
statewide drilling program, stating their confidence in the state’s development
of “safe” and “responsible” gas development, and all but promising to ignore
any citizen petitions for moratoria or bans.
It is, word for word, the same resolution that will be
considered by our town board at their next meeting on June 12. It’s already on
the agenda: “Review/approve Planning Board recommendation on a resolution
supporting natural gas development in the Town of Candor”. But, unlike previous
resolutions, this one has not been posted for citizens to read prior to the meeting.
Last month our town supervisor, Bob Riggs received an email from
the Tioga County Landowners Group urging the town to adopt the “pro-drilling”
resolution.
The thing is, Riggs said in a phone interview Monday
morning, while he feels that the board is mostly pro-drilling, he thinks this
resolution is being rushed. The driving force, he says, is a news article in
which Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens
was quoted as saying that local land-use rules will “continue to be a
consideration” in the permitting process for gas drilling.
Riggs admitted that the only ones who contacted him about
considering the resolution were the head of the landowner’s group and another
individual who doesn’t live in the town.
When asked whether the town is ready for drilling, Riggs
noted that Candor does have a road use agreement and that the planning board
has been reviewing a wellhead protection plan for the village. But the town has
not yet completed a checklist of actions that will help prepare for
industrialized drilling. That checklist comes from TING, a non-partisan county
taskforce that developed a thick binder of information meant to guide towns
through actions that will protect the town’s infrastructure and environment
once drilling commences.
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| People move here for the small town, rural atmosphere |
Neither has the town determined whether drilling is
compatible with the Town Comprehensive Plan. That plan seeks to preserve the
rural character of Candor, encourage small business and light industry, and
maintain or improve property values – goals that conflict with
large-scale industrialized shale gas drilling.
A few towns to the west, another town council is considering
the same resolution. Theirs came in a thick envelope from Southern Tier Economic Growth, a Chemung county economic council that in 2011 received close
to 75% of its funding from taxpayer dollars. And yes, the resolution was, word
for word, identical to the one that Candor is considering; that Spencer passed;
that went out to every town in Steuben county.
A council member in one of the Chemung county towns
currently considering the resolution speculates that this resolution as a response
to the growing movement to ban drilling. Towns don’t want to become embroiled
in lawsuits by landowners angry that they can’t lease their land. On the other
hand, he said, “if it can be proven that this resolution encourages drilling to
come into a town, and if problems result, then towns could be sued for that.
This resolution opens towns up to more lawsuits than if we do nothing.”
The other problem he sees is that people voting on this
resolution have a vested interest in seeing drilling happen in their town.
“Elected officials who have leases should not be voting for this kind of
resolution,” he said. “Indeed, they should recuse themselves from voting on any
of these issues where they have a financial stake in the outcome.”
