Stormy waters are brewing. It begins in upstate New York and could spill over into Westchester, the rest of the state, and across the country.
The storm has its source in residential “fracking” – high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing for natural gas under people’s homes. Gas drilling companies, which covet the underground gas deposits in New York’s Marcellus Shale, have executed an aggressive land grab for gas leases across the state’s Southern Tier from unsuspecting homeowners for the purpose of fracking. Dangling promises of royalties that can go unfulfilled, the leasing brokers fail to inform homeowners of the heavy industrial, uninsurable risks fracking entails. Based on decades of conventional vertical drilling, homeowners signed preprinted lease agreements without negotiation. Today, these homeowners are trapped indefinitely by leases that give strangers free reign to take over their property while relinquishing basic home ownership benefits they once took for granted.
The storm has its source in residential “fracking” – high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing for natural gas under people’s homes. Gas drilling companies, which covet the underground gas deposits in New York’s Marcellus Shale, have executed an aggressive land grab for gas leases across the state’s Southern Tier from unsuspecting homeowners for the purpose of fracking. Dangling promises of royalties that can go unfulfilled, the leasing brokers fail to inform homeowners of the heavy industrial, uninsurable risks fracking entails. Based on decades of conventional vertical drilling, homeowners signed preprinted lease agreements without negotiation. Today, these homeowners are trapped indefinitely by leases that give strangers free reign to take over their property while relinquishing basic home ownership benefits they once took for granted.
Sound & Town
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