2010 has bitter start for landowners

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), thought of in these towns as the steward of the reservoirs, The Man or The Blight, made sure it would be an unhappy New Year for anyone within the watershed who had hopes of signing a gas lease. They've made it clear that they will not endorse drilling within the watershed; the only remaining question is whether or not they have the political muscle to make their wishes reality.

For some around here, that's no question at all. DEP is the big, bad villain, and even before the Pepacton and Cannonsdale Reservoirs were created--events that take you back 50 years--there was no love for downstaters and their needs in these parts. I would guess that a good many people believed all along that no good thing would be allowed to take root in any place where the City has an interest. In this narrative, it's almost not worth it to fight the law because there's only one possible ending: we lose again.

Yet there are many questions which are still worth asking. The DEP has been quite cagey since the Marcellus Shale, fracking, and the Millenium pipeline became household phrases back in mid 2008. While there were a few loud hints along the way, the DEP's resistance to gas drilling was always been more implied and guessed at, and never clearly stated until less than a month ago. So first question was: why? There always was enough downstate resistance to drilling to provide cover under the "doing the people's bidding" device. Did the DEP just want to be fair-minded? Did they ever wonder if it might be possible to lease some of the thousands of acres the city has purchased as part of the Memorandum of Agreement that mandated big land grabs in lieu of building an expensive filtration system?

We'll probably never know the answer to these questions.

But 2010 almost certainly will hold the answer to the biggest question for people who own property in the watershed: will there be lawsuits? If so, will they originate through an informal coalition of landowners, or will there be action at the municipal or county level, or perhaps through the Coalition of Watershed Towns?

It's too early to say with absolute certainty that there will never be a gas drilling rig in Andes, Margaretville, Roxbury or any other watershed township. The writing may be on the wall, but stay tuned for updates and also posts on the background of this little tale.

And as to the relations between Catskill folk and the downstaters, let's just say few are feeling the love up here of late, unless they've been against drilling from the get-go.