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Pipeline, Cuomo Asked
County Board To Debate Sending Letter
By JIM KEVLIN • for www.AllOTSEGO.com
COOPERSTOWN – “Poverty is the illness. Good jobs are the cure,” county Reps. Jim Powers, R-Butternuts, and Ed Frazier, R-Unadilla, state in the draft of a letter to Governor Cuomo due for consideration at the county Board of Representatives’ October meeting at 10 a.m. tomorrow in Cooperstown.
The letter urges the governor to “reconsider the many benefits the Constitution Pipeline could provide our area, and direct the Department of Environmental Conservation to work constructively with the natural-gas industry for the pipeline’s completion.”
After setting the stage with quotes from USDA Secretary Tom Vilsak, the legislators state: “Following two devastating floods, Amphenol rebuilt in Sidney. The promise of a natural-gas pipeline was calculated into their building plans. Other industries which might locate here won’t make the same miscalculation. Potential new jobs won’t materialize. Older established jobs will leave.
“Rural America, specifically the Marcellus Shale, provides the natural gas. Rural America should benefit,” the legislators write.
The idea of the letter was proposed by Powers Friday when eight members of the board, plus county Rep. Peter Oberacker, R-Maryland, on speaker phone, met to review progress on its strategic plan and set priorities.
I think they are mistaken in their beliefs that natural gas will provide anything but a few temporary jobs during construction for out of state workers. It will provide a means for NYS to rely on fossil fuels for a couple more decades until the Marcellus gas play is exhausted and continue the degradation of our planet, rather than focusing on the permanent local jobs that alternate energy technology will provide for re-trained local workers.