Comments on: Radio: Full Report

By: Allan Rubin

Allan Rubin — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 05:21:07 +0000

I bought a 150 year old house here 20 years ago and was assessed a very high tax rate which I paid without complaint because I was making city money and was able to spend it in the country and help my neighbors ease their taxes. I neither received nor required any special added services. Now I live here full time and they blame me for all our high taxes. It is not fair and they should stop scapegoating the former city people. We all came from somewhere else originally. Our efforts are now to save the area for all of us from a horrible mistake.

By: Susan Blankensop

Susan Blankensop — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:04:43 +0000

Your coverage of the gas drilling issue is irresponsibly over-simplified. It is not a ‘rich city folks vs poor dairy farmer’ argument.It is about unregulated energy Co.s using their money and lobbying power to get exemptions to environmental laws put in place to protect ALL of us. You should also understand the local tax laws to understand the ‘poor’ dairy farmers tax advantages and what non-farmers pay.

By: Joanne Wasserman

Joanne Wasserman — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:18:55 +0000

I did not like the “us” vs “them” slant of this report. I am a “local”. Although I am not a farmer, I have lived and worked in this area my entire life in a small business started by my husband, who’s great-grandparents first came to the area as carpenters. My son was born and raised here. We are not talking about one or two gas wells out in some farmer’s back field. If drilling is allowed in this Watershed, we are talking about a total industrialization of this so-called “bucolic” landscape. We are talking about a serious threat to an entire Watershed and to the recreational businesses who make their living here. We are talking about the destruction of our total way of life in these small communities up and down the Delaware River. Individual landowners need to consider EVERYONE who resides here. The health and well-being of our future depends on what these landowners ultimately decide to do. We are all in this togehter whether we like it or not.

By: Allan Rubin

Allan Rubin — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:03:54 +0000

Hmmm, which is worse, controlled development of housing or uncontrolled, unregulated industrialization and pollution? Tough call. (sarcasm). No one should have the right to profit while destroying other people’s lives.

By: James Barth

James Barth — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:17:30 +0000

Rick Karr’s report trivializes a vital health concern: the threat to the drinking water of more than 15 million Americans who depend upon the Delaware River Basin as their water source. He does this by turning his narrative into a “natives” vs. New York City “weekender” conflict.

That story is worthy of exploration in itself, yet Mr. Karr also manages to present only a very small part of one side of that issue. Listening to his report, one would think that all those who leased their land for drilling are impoverished dairy farmers, which is so far from the truth that my head is spinning. Listening to his report, one is led to believe that “outsiders” who move to that part of Pennsylvania and build homes are responsible for the rising taxes that we all have to pay. That is ridiculous. He quotes a “local” describing the Damascus Citizens as “carpetbaggers”, and yet he allows no time in his report for a response by Damascus Citizens to any of these views and characterizations.

This comment section is far too short to allow me to provide many counter points. I will say that as a member of the Damascus Citizens steering committee, I attended the “strategy meeting” that we held for Mr. Karr’s benefit that Saturday morning, during which Mr. Karr ran out of audio tape. In a way, his report reflects that fact.

My wife and I bought 25 acres twenty years ago. We designed and had a house built (by a local contractor) in 2003. I was able to live full time in that house for five years, four of which I volunteered for the local fire department. The “natives” are the ones who have children who attend school locally, and it is the school tax that
is the greatest burden by far. Wayne County is a low service area: volunteer fire, volunteer ambulance, about four State troopers for the county. What services do second home owners receive for their taxes? “Natives” run the local town boards and county commissions. They determine tax assessments and rates. “Weekenders” just pay the taxes so the “dairy farmer’s” kids can go to a nice school.

Two hunting clubs own the more than 1,500 acres that lie between us and the Delaware River. They have leased to Chesapeake, and to my knowledge, Chesapeake will be allowed to drill up to 52 wells in that 2.4 square mile area. The club members are not “poor dairy farmers”, they are the local elite lawyers and business owners from the Honesdale (county seat) area.

In retrospect, perhaps I expectied too much from Mr. Karr’s report. First, I thought I lived in America, and that even “weekenders” from NYC are American. I also thought that the threat drilling poses threatens us all. I guess not in the “natives” eyes, or in Mr. Karr’s.

Second, I think that horizontal drilling/hydraulic fracturing using toxic chemicals; an inherently poisonous process that will threaten the drinking water supply of fifteen million Americans in the Delaware River Basin area, is the important story. I guess it takes the backseat in Mr. Karr’s eyes.

This vital issue demands serious journalism. Who will step up to the plate?

By: Diane Townsend

Diane Townsend — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 18:45:31 +0000

It is really too bad that farmers in Damascus Township, where I live, see city folks or gas drilling as a choice of what to do with their land. There are many people here with small properties that earn a living just like everyone else. The health of us all is at stake here, and we should not allow big oil and gas to take the land and spoil it for our future generations weather they be city folk or country folk.

By: Pat Carullo

Pat Carullo — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:50:23 +0000

It is unfortunate that the editors & producers of this report – choose to frame the issue as “us against them”. The gas drilling issue is not about city people or farmers – it is about the fact that the gas & oil industry [alone] now enjoy a “total federal deregulation” – and they wish to drill thousands of gas wells in protected watersheds – using secret toxic chemicals. Private property rights do not include injecting millions-of-gallons of our water into the ground mixed with 30,000 gallons of toxic chemicals.