Elected officials in the Town of Chenango, NY, voted unanimously on Wednesday to schedule a public hearing over whether to enact a one-year moratorium on oil and natural gas activities, including hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

Under the proposed Local Law No. 3, permit applications for oil and gas exploration, extraction and support activities would be banned for one year to give the town “a reasonable time to study the potential impacts, effects, and possible controls over such activities and to consider possible amendments to the Town’s zoning laws and comprehensive plan to address the same.”

“We have some issues like the roads, the noise, the lighting, the comprehensive plan to look at and make sure it’s in place and we all understand it,” Chenango Town Supervisor Harold Snopek told the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin. “Our position is, I guess we don’t want to jump into something that we are vague on.”

Daryl Hansen, who owns 30 acres in Chenango, told NGI’s Shale Daily that he attended Wednesday’s meeting and spoke with members of the town board afterward.

“They said they really wanted the public hearing,” Hansen said Friday. “They said they would rather hear from people 10 times than not giving them a chance to talk. I can understand that.”

Although the public hearing has been scheduled for 7 p.m., Monday, Oct. 1, at the town hall, Chenango Town Clerk Rhonda Milks told NGI’s Shale Daily the meeting may need to be moved to a larger venue in order to accommodate what is expected to be a full house.

“I don’t see a need for a moratorium,” Hansen said. “We’re under one now. It’s frustrating because we pay taxes, and now the town is telling us that we can’t do what we want with our land on the pretext that something might happen. That’s not the way we do things in this country. It’s taking away landowner rights.”

Hansen added that although he hasn’t been approached by an energy company to sign a lease for his 30 acres, “if they come to me with a lease that has the right protections in it, then I would be in favor of it. It’s not just about the money; they have to be responsible with the drilling.”

According to the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York, as of mid-May about 72 municipalities in the state have enacted moratoriums on fracking, while another 22 local governments — including the cities of Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Geneva, Ithaca, Niagara Falls and Syracuse — have banned fracking outright.

Broome County is one of five counties that in June were floated by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration as possible localities that could be open to high volume fracking, provided the Department of Environmental Conservation grants regulatory approval (see Shale Daily, June 14). Meanwhile, local governments across the state have been choosing sides in the fracking debate (see Shale Daily, June 6; June 4; May 22).

The Town of Middlefield in Otsego County and the Town of Dryden in Tompkins County have also enacted local ordinances that ban fracking. In separate rulings earlier this year, county judges upheld those ordinances (see Shale Daily, Feb. 29; Feb. 23). Both decisions are expected to be appealed.