The rush for shale gas in Pennsylvania, unhindered in the absence of regulatory burdens under Governor Tom Corbett’s administration, continues to provide fodder for skeptics in New York.
Greg Ball, a 35-year-old Republican senator from Carmel, is the latest New York state politician to hold Pennsylvania up as an example of how to botch shale gas development. Today Ball is schedule to meet with residents of Dimock, Pennsylvania who claim water and property have been degraded by shale gas development. The meeting is a backdrop for the senator’s push for a one-year ban on hydraulic fracturing in New York.
Ball said he believes the shale gas development can help New York’s economy, but not the way it is unfolding in Pennsylvania. In a recent Town Hall meeting in Milan, Ball explained the challenge of getting to the bottom of the rhetoric that typifies the debate about the merit of hydraulic fracturing. “The industry will tell me one thing – ‘you can drink the fracking fluid – don’t worry about it, there are no issues whatsoever. And those 20 cows that died? That was just a mistake, that really never happens ‘… And you have the anti-frackers who say there are four-headed fish and they are walking down the streets and its Armageddon.”
