Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Frick'n and Frack'n questions continue but.....

The question about hydrofracking reached the DEC today with an input session for citizens....the Eaton area has been home to this type of gas exploration for years.  As a matter of fact a well that was put in about 1940 in Lebanon, just over the hill from Eaton, has produced gas since that time.....

As historian I have written a number of articles on the discovery of gas in the town of Eaton and one story is actually quite humorous.  It seems in the mid 1800's it was noticed that an oily slick laid on top of a marshy area in a place between Eaton and Morrisville.  The owner of the land and oil company speculators were sure it was oil...

Drilling  started and one ninght the well blew up and created quite a fire..visible for miles and miles...they had hit natural gas.....to live'n things up bands came from the surrounding communities to celebrate the oil discovery..that turned out to be gas....humorously to this day only Morrisville..(most likely because of the college)..has gas..the rest of us do not....though we have tons of new gas wells all over the town..something I tried unsuccessfully to bring to the publics attention.

I tried to get a site that could be used to feed Eaton and or a developement site that we could use to attract a small company.  Another thought I had was to make it an agricultural project that could use the gas as gas for heat and to generate electricity for lights and fans... this to start a hypropnic gardening produce center like one in Ithica.  This was in the 1995-98 time frame.  I also suggested that we charge these companies for the use of our poor rural roads.

To a meeting I scheduled the company (Then Nornue) sent big time attorney's disguised in flanel shirts and blue jeans... to assure us of their project being safe and friendly......I surmised eventually that their local target was to supply gas to the pipeline and to Colgate University.

A few years later I was visited by some people from the University to see what I knew about the company...which was actually more than one company with different names.....

All said and done one well has caught fire and burned for some time out of control, another in Brookfield fouled the wells of locals and my house shook when their detonations go off....

It has however...led me to solve a mystery of sorts that plagued the locals for years..stories of lights that would arrive on the hills at night..especially on hot summer nights.....thought to be UFO's....well..those lights are right where the majority of Eaton's gas wells are today!.....

The Case for UFO's closed........bsm

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