Actually, after attending Democracy School in September, water protection is exactly the angle I am taking with gas drilling. Because the bottom line is: if we can't protect our water, we are all fracked. Working from the Barnstead Ordinance passed to declare water a community resource unavailable to corporations, I tailored one for the town of Danby. I'm going to present it at the next board meeting. The ordinance also recognizes the rights of nature, and does not recognize corporations as persons.
We are prohibited from passing local laws on oil or gas extraction, thanks to the 1981 changes to NYS Environmental Conservation Law 23-0303: ECL §23-0303(2) provides that DEC’s Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Law supersedes all local laws relating to the regulation of oil and gas development except for local government jurisdiction over local roads and the right to collect real property taxes. So I am approaching it from a water prospective, since we all need water to survive, and gas companies need a lot of water to frack the wells. If they can't get it in town, it will make it a lot harder for them to do business. If anyone is interested in learning more about this approach, or in helping me, please contact me off list: [email protected]. Thanks, Eric ________________________________ From: Gay Nicholson <[email protected]> To: Sustainable Tompkins County listserv <[email protected]> Sent: Fri, October 23, 2009 8:37:14 PM Subject: Re: [SustainableTompkins] Nov 13-14 Democracy School One of this year's Bioneers speakers talked about how Democracy School graduates are using this to fend off bottled water companies. I believe local government resistance to hydrofracking might benefit from using this proactive "upstream" approach to dealing with the impacts of gas drilling. I urge anybody involved as a citizen leader on gas drilling to consider going to Democracy School in November to explore this set of tools for use on this local issue. Of course, I recognize that with so many landowners having signed leases there may not be the political will in most towns to use these tools -- unlike in the communities fighting bottled water mining. But if even a few villages or towns passed ordinances stripping corporations of their "personhood" rights.... that would be a step in the right direction on many fronts. I went to Democracy School several years ago, and if you can muster the political will in your town, this creates a whole different kind of court case with energy companies. Are there any municipalities in the Southern Tier likely to have the courage to try this? Gay _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins Questions about the list? ask [email protected] free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
