Marcellus Shale: How To Ruin a Perfectly Good Farm (Part Two)

Ron Gulla of Hickory, PA, tells about what is happening to him as a result of signing a gas lease with Range Resources. He has become an activist and advocate for others who are also victims of the gas industry like he is. Currently in court with Range Resources, Mr. Gulla has vowed to fight for his rights to the bitter end.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Marcellus Shale: How To Ruin a Perfectly Good Farm (Part One)

This is a must see video filmed March 12, 2010. Featured is landowner Ron Gulla (goo-lah) whose farm in Hickory, PA, was ruined by the gas drilling industry. His riveting story will leave you speechless. How could his story be true? Yet it is all true. Mr. Gulla leased his land in 2002. He got $7.50 per acre and 13.5% royalties. Listen to his story about what happened to him and his family: theft, breaking and entering, court appearances, gas drillers defecating all over his property, garbage strewn everywhere. Would you expect this on your property if you signed a lease? I wouldn't. But this is the norm. Gas drillers say that they value the relationship with the landowners on whose property they are operating. However, Ron Gulla's story proves this is not the case. There is no such thing as respect or cooperation. Leased land is used up and destroyed, never to be the same again.

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!

Ron Gulla and Don Barber Speak At Broome Community College (NY)

Broome (NY) Community College; June 15, 2009

Ron Gulla

Pennsylvanian Ron Gulla has farmed since he was ten years old. He worked his way through college to get a degree in business administration. He and his wife Laurel have raised two children on their 118-acre farm, where they have had first-hand experience with a well on their property.

Don Barber

Five-term supervisor of the Town of Caroline, Don Barber grew up on a dairy farm in Danby and still lives on a small farm with his family. He chairs the Tompkins County Council of Governments and also owns a successful residential construction company.

Natural Gas Drilling and Local Government Responsibility
To Protect the Health, Safety, and Well Being of its Citizens

by Don Barber

In general local governments need to find ways to insert themselves into a process that the State has written us out of.

Potential action steps:

1. Develop overweight vehicle permits and driveway permits to protect your roads and create direct contact/negotiations with the drilling firm.

2. Identify and legislate critical environmental areas (CEA) within your municipality. DEC must then perform site specific SEQR review for permit applications which affect these CEA’s

3. Contact every State Legislator, Governor Paterson and his Deputy Secretary for the Environment, and the DEC Commissioner that we need:

• Notification of permit applications and permits issued;
• Emergency Services need contact info, hazardous material info, gas fire training;
• Fuel production tax or Severance tax to create proper revenues to local governments - tax revenue to support DEC oversight program

4. Contact State Legislators requesting that ECL Section 23-0303 be amended so that local governments become involved agencies for SEQR review. And to support S8748 Natural Gas Drilling Prohibition Near Watershed

5. Contact your Congressperson and US Senator to support HR 2766 Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act of 2009.

Don Barber- Chair Tompkins County Council of Governments, Supervisor Town of Caroline, supervisor at townofcaroline.org

DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY!
Thanks to Essential Dissent, Binghamton, NY, for this video.
http://essentialdissent.blogspot.com