NY State's Preservation League joins the fracking wars

A New Weapon in the Fracking Wars

By Mireya Navarro
March 29, 2012, 9:59 am

In recent months, efforts to restrict future natural gas drilling in New York State have ranged from proposed buffer zones around gas wells for the protection of watersheds and aqueducts to outright drilling bans enacted by towns and villages.

Enter the historic preservationists.



Photo: Preservation League of New York State

The Preservation League of New York State plans to announce this week that it will list swaths of land in drilling regions upstate as endangered historic and cultural resources and seek drilling restrictions around the properties.

League officials argue that proposed state rules that would govern hydrofracking once this type of drilling is green-lighted by the Cuomo administration do not take historic resources in the Marcellus or Utica Shale regions into account. As a result, they say, many valuable properties would be vulnerable to damage from industrial activity.

The officials say they are trying to protect buildings and agricultural landscapes dating back to the 1700s and 1800s in 30 counties. These include Greek Revival-style houses, barns and field patterns.
“You’re in effect seeing landscapes that existed 150 years ago,” said Daniel Mackay, the league’s director of public policy. “That type of setting is at risk of having its character transformed by the drilling, support traffic, pipelines and water withdrawals.”

In their comments to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which is currently reviewing the proposed fracking regulations and an environmental impact study, preservationists are urging state officials to require a survey of historic and cultural resources as a condition of granting a drilling permit application. Once such resources are identified, buffer zones should be created to protect those sites, they say.

In the meantime, the league, a nonprofit member-based organization based in Albany, is adding all historic and cultural sites in the Marcellus and Utica Shale gas regions to its endangered properties program, known as Seven to Save. The goal is to make those sites a priority for the next two years and raise public awareness about them.

The effort includes channeling grant money into research to identify more historic sites.
League officials say that publicity and advocacy from Seven to Save designations have resulted in the rehabilitation of buildings like the Oswego City Public Library and the George Harvey Justice Building in Binghamton, among other places.


Resource: The New York Times - Politics & Policy