Essay By Dick Downey of the Unatego (NY) Landowners' Group: Taking on "The Pure"

In the Letters to the Editor section of the 9/28/2011 Hometown Oneonta, Ms. Gates of Cooperstown bemoans the demise of the tourism business if gas drilling comes to Cooperstown.  Ms. Jastremski, in a letter entitled, "Are You On The Side Of Love Or Greed?" scolds "an industry driven by greed and individuals blinded by avarice."  She contrasts landowner avarice with scientist Sandra Steingraber's donation of her $100,000 Heinz Award to anti-fracing activities.

Both letters trot out the evils of gas extraction one more time — water contamination, eternal 24/7 drilling, drop in real estate values, loss of state and local tax revenue, boycotts of Otsego County produce in NYC, increased truck traffic, chemical contamination of children, destruction of our community's water and air and so on.

One problem with exaggerations, falsehoods, and lies are that facts in studies contradict them.  The SGEIS might be considered such a study — 3 years in the making, 1,537 pages long, with data gathered from 10 gas-producing states.  When implemented, it will have been reviewed three times, with critiques from all points of view.  More regulations, protocols, check lists, etc. are in the making, with multiple redundancies necessary for the workers' and the public's safety.

Furthermore, the SGEIS will be in continual review.

And still there will be accidents, as in any industry.  These accidents will be few.  They will be cleaned up.  But that will not satisfy "The Pure."

"The Pure" tell us greed (the profit motive?) in tourism is Good.  Greed in gas drilling is Bad.  Susan Steingraber is juxtaposed to expose us gassers' baser motives.  We have no problem with Ms. Steingraber's altruism.  She seems like a decent, generous woman.  We hope she follows science and not her biases with her $100,000 gift, therefore helping people. 

Our problem is with "The Pure."

So let me present another exemplary citizen, George Mitchell.  In the early 80's, George Mitchell pioneered the combination of horizontal drilling with water (and other) fracturing techniques to produce gas from shale.  He had mixed financial success but, in so doing, was copied by dozens, then hundreds, now thousands of other drillers, each generation improving on the former.  This technological revolution has released the potential of shale on every continent.  It has fractured production patterns that have impacted the geopolitical world for decades.  It appears that these technologies will substantially reduce our country's dependence on foreign energy.  It has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs in and outside the industry.

These jobs will probably not be of interest to "The Pure."  The scions of the First Families of Cooperstown will not be taking night classes at DCMO-BOCES to qualify for CDL or hazmat licenses.  The children of the retirees with defined benefit plans will not be matriculating at Morrisville Community College to learn how to be a mudlogger.  The children of "The Pure" are studying or working elsewhere.  The young and not-so-young people who will be taking the courses and getting gas industry jobs will be the kind of people who tried to get a job at Amphenol, didn't have the pull, and relocated in construction down in North Carolina.  (Actually, not a bad career move, seeing what might happen to Amphenol's 3,000 jobs.)  The job-seekers may even be the kids of "the greedy landowners seduced by avarice," who live up the hills out of town, whose best shot prior to gas industry opportunity would be night manager at Dunkin Donuts.

As opportunity opens and workforce needs improve, more and more young people looking for work will be drawn to our area.  They will bring their families and re-populate our emptying schools.  They will settle here.

All this because of innovation by one man, followed by others. George Mitchell, wildcatter (10,000 wells drilled, 550 strikes) before working the fracing/horizontal drilling combination.  He now gives the types of grants that Susan Steingraber receives.  His financial risks may indirectly enrich our entire Central New York area.

And perhaps provide a new face on the dart board of "The Pure."

Heinz Foundation Sought to Buy Academic Activism, But Fired Pitt When It Balked

My blog is time- and inclination-dependent.  And when I do have the time, or the inclination, I try to aim toward original content, rather than the much easier amplification upon the work of others — a shortcut which seems to define so much of the blogosphere.

(If you're also interested in my occasional, quick-and-easy amplification, just follow me on Twitter.)

But, in this case, I make an exception.

This is an easily lost story from the Sept. 7 edition of The Pitt News, the daily student newspaper of the University of Pittsburgh.  It is an innocent, unknowing, worldwide scoop by a student journalist that, to date, no one in the mainstream media has picked up on.  

In fact, not even the rabid, conservative outlets seem to have taken notice.

That lack of bounce makes no sense to me.  And, having been a highly pumped student journalist once myself, I find that sort of non-response disheartening — to say the least.

In a nutshell, this story is a very quiet smoking gun, exposing the fact that well-endowed representatives of the left wing in America shop for, and buy, political advocacy from within the halls of academia — openly, and without fear of shame, or exposure. 

They don't even seem to think there's anything wrong with it. 

And, when they don't get the kind of rabble-rousing they want — from within the Ivory Tower — they simply take their money elsewhere.

It's true that business interests also throw around a lot of money, and swing around a lot of influence.  But they are usually wayyy more subtle about it.

Pitt loses Marcellus Shale research funds

By: Mallory Grossman / News Editor

Posted on 07. Sep, 2011 in News

Heinz Endowments will no longer fund Marcellus Shale gas drilling research at Pitt because the school focused too much on research and not enough on advocacy.

The University will continue to research the public health impact surrounding Marcellus Shale gas drilling, but Pitt will no longer run programs such as FracTracker.org, an online tool collecting data on the drilling.

Heinz Endowments previously funded the FracTracker database at Pitt with an $1,800,000 grant. The foundation is currently seeking a new place to run its programs.

The foundation supports projects that aim to improve quality of life in the Pittsburgh region, and focuses on five disciplines which are represented by their grant programs: arts and culture, children, youth and families, education, environment and innovation economy, according to their web site.

The withdrawn funding marks an end to one of the most prolific projects for the Center for Healthy Environments & Communities (CHEC), part of the Graduate School of Public Health. The center has also had two directors in the past year, and the position is currently vacant.

Despite withdrawal of funding for the programs, Allison Schlesinger, a spokeswoman for Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, said Pitt will continue to do research around Marcellus Shale drilling.

“We will continue to do that research, they’re just not funding it,” Schlesinger said.

Heinz Endowment officials were not immediately available for comment.

Despite the removal of research programs, Schlesinger said that CHEC is still grateful for the funding from the endowments for its other programs.

She said GSPH and Heinz Endowments will “continue to work together to find a permanent home for FracTracker.org and to establish joint research priorities.”

Heinz Endowments founded CHEC in 2004 under a grant, and it will continue to fund multiple research programs at the center on air quality, water quality and other public health issues that impact southwestern Pennsylvania, Schlesinger said.

Schlesinger said Heinz Endowments will no longer fund Marcellus Shale research programs at Pitt because the center favors research over advocacy.

She said Heinz Endowments officials feel CHEC is not doing enough community outreach and advocacy based on the research.

“CHEC has become uncomfortable with outreach,” Schlesinger said. “We are a University research center, of course we favor research. That’s what we’re supposed to do.”

Schlesinger said that while the school doesn’t oppose advocacy and outreach, its primary job is research. She said advocacy and outreach must be research-based.

The same issue of research versus advocacy caused former director of the center, Dr. Conrad “Dan” Volz Jr., to resign in April. His successor and former dean of GSPH, Dr. Bernard Goldstein, also recently resigned from the position.

The Pitt News reported in April that Volz said he left because his beliefs concerning environmental advocacy and public health did not match those of the University, especially when it came to Marcellus Shale drilling.

The former Pitt professor is an open critic of Marcellus Shale drilling and said that the University was not allowing him to openly voice his dissent, so he left of his own accord.

In the month prior to his resignation, Volz published controversial research linking drilling to contaminated drinking water, specifically citing high levels of bromide in the Josephine brine treatment facility in Indiana County, Pa.

Schlesinger said Goldstein was also an advocate against natural gas drilling and spoke out at numerous community events.

Tropical Storm Lee Dumps On Upstate Anybody Need Any Frack Water?

The Chenango River — at a point just downstream of Chenango Forks, NY — is currently running in excess of 20,000 cubic feet per second.  I haven't been paying very close attention, but I'm assuming that this Fall Flood of 2011 will be credited to some leftover dampness from Tropical Storm Lee.

That big a flow translates to more than 12 billion gallons per day running past the point where the U.S. Geological Survey has long maintained a station, tucked behind the golf course at Chenango Valley State Park.  Robotically updated, up-to-the-hour data from this riverside sampling point, and 241 others just in New York, are all online here (and very handy for both canoeists and downstream homeowners).

I realize this is an extreme amount of water, and an extreme situation, and it hopefully won't stay that way for very long. 

But, just as a thought experiment, consider this... 

Once the NYS DEC and the Susquehanna River Basin Commission allow the enterprise of shale gas drilling to finally get a move-on in NY, what would the limits be if industry was permitted to use just 1 percent of what's flowing right now at Chenango Forks?

That would give the hydrofrackers a supply of 120 million gallons per day, without even touching the other 99 percent left to run downstream.

Needing 5 million gallons to hydraulically fracture a single horizontal shale gas well, that would be enough for 24 wells per day — far, far more, and far, far faster, than NYS will ever see happen.

And yet the drilling opposition continues to score points with mathematically illiterate folks who chose careers in politics or journalism — with many still preferring to wring their collective hands over the spectre of a fracking-induced water shortage.

Baker Hughes Rig Count For PA Drops 5 in One Week: Here's My Prediction

In Pennsylvania, the Baker Hughes' count for the week ending today, Friday, August 19, was 111 active rotary rigs. 

The previous week's count was 116.  So that's a relatively abrupt drop of 4 percent within just one week.

In fact, 116 is now likely to stand for awhile as the PA state record — reached during three separate weeks spread over the last two months.

It's 4 p.m. now.  I'm going on record as predicting that somebody within the northeastern media will make a story out of this, relatively soon.  This will be based either on the more conservative Baker Hughes count, or on one of the competing counts, which tend to include all rigs, whether they're actually drilling or not. 

The story will go something like this:  The rig count is falling!  The rig count is falling!  The New York Times was right!  Shale gas must be a Ponzi scheme!  The bubble's already popping!

(Spoken like somebody who has never lived through an oil and gas downturn — which come around as often as cops at the donut shop.)

There's a lot of possible explanations for what's really going on, starting with the theory that many are moving to oil work, which is paying better.  But I don't know if that'll get much coverage.

I have noticed on numerous occasions over the last year — most recently here — that nobody in the northeastern media has ever said boo directly about Pennsylvania's rig count hot streak — which has run even or higher, virtually without exception, for every month on average over the last 30 months, since January 2009. 

For some reason, that's not a story.

But now the rig count is headed lower. 

That's a story. 

(I know — I don't get it, either.)

Since this latest mini-crash, we've seen natgas slipping below $4 MMBTU.

I, for one, don't think it makes any sense to sell any more of the stuff at that price level. 

I burn the stuff at home. 

And this is my business. 

But I do believe — at this point — industry should ease off. 

Drill less.  Frack less.  Even choke down the valves on existing wells.

In fact, I believe that environmentalists, conservationists, and people who are truly interested in the long-term American public interest should demand that government find ways to make this happen.

We need, like, a government-sanctioned OPEC for shale gas.

NYS DEC Investigation Rejects Big Flats Water Claims vs. Anschutz

Memo From Linda Collart of NYS DEC Minerals Division Region 8 January 31, 2011

The Fall 2010 well water troubles experienced by Big Flats, NY, homeowners were more of a natural, pre-existing, and seasonal phenomenon — rather than having anything to do with gas drilling, experts from the NYS DEC ultimately concluded in January 2011.

That's the final official word, as spelled out in a five-page memo, which is now seeing the light of day due to a lawsuit organized by plaintiffs' attorneys out of New York City.  The case pits nine Big Flats-area homeowners against the privately held Anschutz Energy Corporation of Denver, CO, and two sub-contractors.  The DEC had previously given a skeptical, but more reserved, assessment of the situation in a November 2010 "fact sheet" — which I just re-loaded here.  

Known formally as Baker et al vs. Anschutz et al, the case is now starting to collect some momentum in U.S. District Court, Western District of New York, Rochester.  It was originally filed in the State Supreme Court sitting in Chemung County, but lawyers for Anschutz must have soon thereafter got it bumped up into federal court on some kind of legal technicality.

Partly due to some outright factual errors and to some subtle textual misdirection in the original press release from law firm Napoli Bern Ripka, February 2011, the conflict has been widely misreported as having to do with shale gas and fracking.  In fact, it actually involves neither.  Anschutz's drilling targeted Trenton-Black River, a 10,000-foot-deep layer of limestone which has been most profitably explored in New York using horizontal drilling, but which does not require high-volume hydraulic fracturing to coax free the natgas (if there's any found).  Full-scale operations for shale gas remain frozen under a now-three-year-old ban in NY, at least until early 2012, and the necessary high-volume technology has not yet ever been deployed by industry within the former Empire State.

The Big Flats homeowners' law firm is likely to be correct in asserting this is the "first claim" in New York State alleging domestic water contamination due to oil and gas exploration activity.  But it remains to be seen whether the case is actually intended to go someplace, or whether it's mainly intended to drum up better future business for Napoli Bern.

So far, the file looks like quite a bit of sharp skepticism from technicians, scientists, and officialdom, overlaid with much legal jockeying.  Lawyers for one defendant, Conrad Geoscience Corporation, are asking that their client be cut loose — since all it did was act as an environmental consultant in investigating the water complaints from certain homeowners.  Lawyers for the homeowners want to send the case back to Chemung County.  And lawyers for Anschutz were pressing for fast-track discovery, arguing that there's not enough there there to warrant much long, drawn-out litigation.  The judge remains due to decide a couple preliminary issues after a hearing July 7, which appears to have drawn no media notice.

Another interesting document lurking in the file was a lab report on a methane matching test [paid for by Chemung County because the DEC had no funds available!].  It was explained in a cover letter to at least one concerned homeowner by Chemung County Executive Thomas J. Santulli.  Though it's a little confusing, the lab couldn't make any isotopic fingerprint match between the methane found in two domestic water wells, and the methane coming from Anschutz's Dow #2, Santulli told them.  Here's what the whole thing looks like:

Big Flats High Precision Isotopic Analysis

Cabot Posts Lab Tests, Accusing Dimock Activists of Lying About Dirty Water Props

[Original post Aug. 5.  Update record at end.]  Lab test results of water drawn from two of the better known, now-virtually-full-time anti-drilling activists of Dimock, PA — Victoria Switzer, and Craig and Julie Saunter — were posted online Aug. 3 by the Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation.

Both reports feature nine pages of line-by-line results.  Both are from samples taken from raw, untreated water in November 2010.  And both show the water passing all government standards.  Cabot's starting page for downloading all this technical data is here.

All this has to do with an event originating around New Year's Day, 2009, when a number of Dimock water wells became suddenly murky and infused with methane.  PA regulators later concluded that methane had migrated from shallower-than-Marcellus formations, up to the level of the domestic well water aquifer — along the bedrock-adjoining exterior of unsealed, sub-par, concrete casing work done on nearby natgas wells owned by Cabot.  Cabot has disagreed.

But what's triggered this latest?

Cabot went public with the lab results the same day as a very different sort of persuasive evidence was briefly splashed on a roadside billboard:  A ginormous picture of a pitcher of muddy water, reputedly from the Sautner's supply, surrounded by the ominous-sounding names of a bunch of chemicals — and the claim that the water remains unfixed after three years.

Though it's a PA dispute, the dirty water billboard was paid for by NY-based anti-frack group, Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy, and unveiled in a made-for-media happening Aug. 3, along Route 29 — which runs between the Susquehanna County Seat of Montrose and the much more rustic Dimock Township.

One of the papers from Wilkes-Barre, PA was there, as was one of the Binghamton TV stations.  Didn't see anything out of Gannett, which is kind of surprising.

[The Binghamton TV report is interesting in that it mentions having received from Cabot copies of the same water test results the E&P company has now publicly posted on the web — but that it didn't have the time to interpret what they meant!  I love these guys!]

Cabot spokesman George Stark — who was actually physically on hand, during the activists' billboard opening — told the newspaper this:  "This billboard represents a falsehood.  Test results and science show that the water is clean and meets Safe Drinking Water standards.  We continue to ask for others to prove the water is contaminated when we are able to prove otherwise."

Interestingly enough — as recounted by the same Binghamton TV station on Aug. 4 — the billboard was pasted over the very next day, following a phone call from the landlord of the land upon which the billboard company tenant had its sign — P.J.'s Restaurant and Bar.  The tavern keeper has apparently been making a decent income these days — tending to hungry, thirsty gas industry workers, or anybody else in the area that has some money to spend, downstream of the industry's significant economic impact.

One additional potential piece of cheap irony, which would have to be further researched:  I wonder if the billboard company involved, Park Outdoor, is a distant relative of Park Communications, the media empire of Roy H. Park, Sr., whose fortune now largely rests with the Ithaca-based non-profit Park Foundation — which has been repeatedly shown as one of the primary financiers of the Northeast's anti-drilling movement.

Another relevant and timely tie-in:  Two YouTube videos featuring yet another of the affected Dimock, PA homeowners, Loren Salsman, were posted July 25 by the Marcellus branch office of the industry funded group, Energy in Depth.  Salsman provides a number of key pieces of current information that, to my knowledge, have been completely overlooked during the continuing media stampede over this issue.

In the first video, Salsman explains how his Cabot-supplied water treatment system works; then draws a sample of his raw, untreated water (which does, in fact, have methane in it); and then invites two EID writers to drink up — which they do.  Salsman is of the belief that the methane in his untreated water has now returned to the area's previously existing background levels, an assertion which cannot ever be proven one way or the other — because Cabot unaccountably never tested area water wells for methane, prior to drilling.  (After treatment, of course, Salsman's water is now free of methane.)

In the second video, Salsman explains more about how the 18 families affected by methane migration issues are today broken into two camps — 11, such as Switzer and the Saunters, who remain upset, pursuing private litigation, and holding up jugs of dirty water; and 7, including him, who have accepted a settlement negotiated by the PA DEP, and are basically okay with the situation.  In a comment to this blog (see below), Salsman clarifies he got to this point without having ever signed onto the private litigation.

So what's true?  Test results from an independent lab?  Or a picture of a jug of dirty water collected by activists? 

[Update Aug. 8:  I've made a number of changes above in an effort to accommodate comments coming into my blog from people much closer to the situation than me, including a note from Loren Salsman.  I'm also starting to view the Showdown Under the Billboard, a week later, as showing signs of having been a not-fully-scripted confrontation, kind of like a minor version of the Boston Massacre.  In that category of told and re-told news events, it is ripe for the forces of propagandized folklore to take over the re-telling, the reinterpreting, and the all-important revision.  There are just too many layers of detail and spin where journalism is simply not up to the task.  That being the case, below are links to some later-noticed videos — which at least have the advantage of being primary records of what happened that day.]

• Bill Kelley, owner of P.J.'s Restaurant and Bar, and the land upon which the billboard rented space, telling his perspective on the shale gas industry, and on why he was then in the process of trying to get the activists' billboard taken down.

• Cabot spokesman Stark, talking to the media — and at the end answering an interruption from an activist, alleging that all the chemicals listed on the sign were found in the Sautner's water by Duke University.

• Unnamed resident interviewed by Binghamton TV — quietly attempting to give a pro-drilling perspective, but pretty hard to hear with all the others talking loudly in the background.

Recent Shale Gas Non News

I've noticed these news items recently.  But media professionals in the northeastern U.S. have disagreed with me, making editorial decisions to keep this information from their respective audiences.

I have a pet theory about this:  Modern media — always desperate for attention — have evolved themselves into an over-specialized dead end.  They've got so many rules.  The biggest rule is this:  Any prospective story — in order to be recognized as news, and to win the flash and sizzle of the front page, and pickup across the land — must supply three items:  an appealing victim, a blameworthy culprit, and some sort of easily understood dramatic conflict or injustice presumably running between the two of them.

Openly violating the tenets of journalism, it turns out these stories don't have to be true, or real, or proveable; they must only seem believeable.  And, yes, believeableness is as much a function of what an audience wants to believe, as it is the skill of the teller, or the enormity of the facts.  So left-leaning outlets have their favorite sorts of perceived injustices:  Big American Oil Greedily Manipulates Prices, Screwing Innocent Family Vacationers.  And right-leaning outlets have their favorites:  Welfare Queens and Their Blood-Sucking Trial Lawyers Work the System, Screwing Innocent Hard-Working Taxpayers.

These rules are a lot like the formulas which have commercially evolved so as to dictate the dramatic pattern of plays, or novels, or sit-coms, or psychological thrillers:  Must have beginning, a middle, and an end (Shakespeare).  Must feature a main character you either like or you don't, and that person must want something (Keillor).  Tell me a story (Hewitt).

It's not news otherwise.  Not relevant.  Not important.  Not interesting.  That's become the rule.

It's true that lots of relevant, important, interesting stuff goes on in the world which doesn't quite fit this familiar media narrative.  But — if you can't cobble together those three dramatically clashing elements — well, then, I'm sorry, it's just not a news story.

Among ordinary readers, this does, in fact, lead to a shockingly biased understanding of Actual Reality.  But what are you gonna do?

Here's all I can do:  Keep a close focus on the issue of shale gas in the northeastern U.S.'s Marcellus and Utica zones.  And, by way of protest, outline some relevant, important, interesting things which are just not news:

• Known as of August 2 from specialized case-monitoring by Bloomberg News in NYC and reported here:  NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been given a fairly stiff reply from the U.S. government on his well-publicized frack lawsuit.  In fact, the U.S. is already seeking dismissal.  This is in connection with the freshman AG's round-about attempt to further slow the Delaware River Basin Commission's already painfully slow unfurling of shale gas drilling regulations in its NY-PA watershed area — where the federal-state compact organization has so far successfully claimed regulatory jurisdiction that overlaps the powers of the individual states.  You ask me, I think this story should run in any media outlet that ran the AG's original filing — which would put it in the hundreds, if not thousands.  But I'm betting the editors will slack on this.  This story will be rejected as merely routine legal jockeying.  And also because it contradicts the themes of the heroic story that has already been so widely told.  [Google News the next morning:  Only the original Bloomberg postings!  Toldja!  ...Then, around 11 a.m., it looks like Gannett proposes to hide a brief on their blogs.  ...Then, by around 1 p.m., Jon Campbell has a full story up at the Binghamton P&SB.  Good deal!]

• Announced here August 1:  An obscure arm of the federal government, the Research Partnership to Secure Energy For America (RPSEA) — which is evidently funded by royalty income from oil and gas development on lands of the U.S.A. — has given away $12.4 million in grants for research projects having some kind of bearing on shale gas — or other modern-day challenges in the wide world of fossil fuels.  High on the list was this:  NORM (Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials) Mitigation and Clean Water Recovery from Marcellus Frac Water, a project to be led by GE Global Research (Niskayuna, NY), and involving participation from Endicott Interconnect Technologies (which picked up where IBM left off in Endicott, NY); Inflection Energy LLC (Denver, CO, based, but with known leasehold interests in the upstate area of Broome and Tioga counties); and Stearns & Wheeler (environmental consultant based in Cazenovia, NY).  Jim Willis' Marcellus Drilling News here dug it out as a $2 million project, of which $1.6 million will be from public funds.  It's true, maybe I'm biased, but I think this should run at least with the business briefs in upstate.  The moral of this story is that — instead of reps from NY's substantial community of experts mobilizing in order to help the activists shoot down shale gas, a theme which has been widely covered — here we have parts of this same professional community organizing in order to increase knowledge, to decrease impact (if any) — and to get paid.  I have tweeted this generally, and I have direct-messaged @PSBStephen.  We shall see.  [Result as of August 3:  Still bupkis!]

• Of record as of July 27, as outlined by me here:  The NY portion of Michigan-based DTE Energy's $250 million, 37-mile Bluestone Gathering pipeline is officially on file with the NYS Public Service Commission.  I knew this news would be problematic for the Binghamton Press, because that paper had just the week before, July 21, put out a story headlined, "Michigan firm's gas pipeline plan hits snag."  If there's such a snag, then why is there this flood of technical paper now on file with the state authorities?  No one's yet done anything with this.  If the affected landowners were up in arms, then it would be a story.  But, so far, the landowners seem to fall into only three different categories:  1) Those who have already signed easement deals with the developer; 2) Those who are organizing in order to collectively bargain for more lucrative, more protective easement deals; and 3) Those who live nearby, and who have chosen to live and let live.  Still not a story?  Why is this not a story? 

• Happened mid-July, but not reported until July 22 and July 27 — and then only in very limited outlets, and in somewhat confusing ways, as shown here and here:  The Coalition of Watershed Towns — a collection of all the upstate town governments, spread across five counties, which together represent all the land which drains water toward New York City's drinking water collection reservoirs — voted unanimously against the Cuomo Administration's proposed permanent shale gas ban in those areas.  This action appears to have been taken at the behest of Delaware County Board of Supervisors Chair James E. Eisel Sr., and under the guidance of Coalition Attorney Jeffrey Baker.  Here, we see an unusual twist in the possible casting and plot for a potential story — what with the culprit being played in this case by pushy wealthy New York City water consumers (and their political henchmen), and the victim represented by economically down-trodden upstate landowners, and the injustice being the emotionally obscure, uncompensated loss of property rights, and economic development, caused by all this regulatory over-zealousnous against natgas drilling.  Though it had potential — still, very little coverage, and certainly no bounce.  Maybe next time.

• Happened July 23, 2011:  Cabot Oil and Gas held its second annual Community Picnic, this time on the Harford Fairgrounds, Susquehanna County, PA.  I beforehand made fun of the promotional poster here.  There was free admission, free food, and free gifts.  And more than 4,000 people reportedly took them up on it.  That's about twice the number who showed up last year, and a pretty good turnout — considering that the population of Susquehanna County, PA, was only 43,356 during the last census.  Cabot has faced widespread bad press — nearly comparable to such Seventies-Eighties eco dramas as Love Canal, or Times Beach — over much of the last two years.  This was in connection with shallow methane migration issues which, at least temporarily, affected nearby domestic well water supplies, and which stemmed from gas well casing failures in this very same county, namely Dimock.  To have read all this non-stop coverage, you would think they didn't have a single friend left anywhere in this area.  But I dunno; judging from this picnic, it doesn't look that way to me.  I did see some error-laden, second-string newspaper coverage from Scranton, PA, and some Binghamton TV coverage, but neither clearly knew what to do with the story.  Again, if the facts can't be leveraged so as to reinforce the established narrative, they get clumsy about it.