January 2011 Archives

Republican Mark Grisanti, a newcomer who defeated Democrat Antoine Thompson for a New York State Senate seat in November, will take over a key committee chairmanship from his former opponent.

The Buffalo News reported this week that Grisanti, a freshman from Erie County, was appointed by Dean Skelos, the new Senate majority leader, to chair the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee. The election flipped control of the Senate to the GOP.

The panel was previously chaired by Thompson, a veteran who also hails from Erie County and who authored the state's legislative ban on hydraulic fracturing.

The New York Independent Oil and Gas Association may have good cause to be wary of Joseph Martens, Governor Andrew Cuomo's pick to head the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

As president of the Open Space Institute, Martens said in a speech last year at Union College, New York, that hydraulic fracturing in the state's Marcellus Shale formation "may be the most difficult and daunting challenge" ever faced by the DEC, which is in charge of oil and gas drilling permits in the state.

"If nothing else, it seems to me, the department should go slow. The tragedy of the Deepwater Horizon operation in the Gulf clearly demonstrated that the unexpected can and will happen," he said. "It is also clear that the gas industry has not been as candid as it should have been with regards to the potential for problems. That suggests to me that our fate -- and the need to separate objective science and environmental assessment from industry rhetoric -- is in DEC's hands, and the stakes could not be higher."