I am totally for supporting tough environmental regulations related to gas drilling. For me a key issue is also limiting the number of wells that can be drilled per spacing unit (acreage).
Deb Teeter via CCE and others provided in 2005 information about the purpose of a 'spacing unit'. Wells are spaced according to mineral laws and regulations. The idea is to to extract efficiently with as few wells as possible. Spacing unit is the surface boundaries of an underground gas deposit. NYS DEC approves the spacing unit. Gas companies must declare to the NYS DEC exactly where they have determined the surface boundaries of an underground gas deposit lie. Trenton-Black River wells usually have a spacing unit of 640 acres associated with them. In addition to the efforts to deal with the environmental impact that any one well would have we need to think about the spacing units. If one well has 640 acres as its spacing unit it would mean one well per one square mile. Tompkins County has a total area of 492 square miles. I understand (not verified) that a regulation has been approved to allow one well per 40 acres. That translates to a max of 16 wells per square mile. In one case we would be talking about a max of 492 wells; in the other case 492x16 = 7872. The number of wells that could be drilled needs to be capped as well as gas drilling techniques. Spacing becoms very important. It is a key factor to the overall impact that gas drilling will have. We need to raise questions about current spacing regulations along with the environmental impact of a gas well. Fred Schoeps Ithaca, NY _______________________________________________ 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
