By Larry Beahan
Hiking the scenic Beehunter Trail in Allegany State Park, I came up on an ugly sight: a National Fuel Gas storage well. National Fuel had clear-cut a half-acre or more around this contraption of large-diameter pipes painted green and adorned with wart-like bolts. The beast lazed in the muddy, rutted center of this man-made hole in the 100-year-old forest. It looked like a young brontosaurus, sated after eating its fill and trampling all the greenery within reach.
A mud and gravel road led me to another of these intruders. At home, I looked at Allegany on Google Earth and located 14 of these wells at the ends of a tangle of National Fuel roads. The roads, sadly, dissect 9,000 acres of park forest that have been leased to National Fuel for the last half-century.
In spring, 2014, the lease approached its end. A new master plan protected the park from oil, gas and lumber extraction. We rejoiced: No more National Fuel dinosaurs tearing up the park. Then National Fuel announced intentions to double its storage capacity and extend the park lease another 50 years. The New York State Office of Parks Recreation & Historic Preservation was considering approval. On top of that, a close reading of the master plan revealed its protection did not extend to the lease. The lease includes half of Allegany’s old growth. We cried foul. And State Parks agreed to extend the lease a single year, “to hear the public’s opinion.”
That year ended this spring, and there were no hearings. Suddenly, the announcement came with seven days’ notice: New York State Parks is offering National Fuel a 15-year lease with no date certain of leaving the park.
National Fuel has fortified itself and intimidated State Parks by hiring the big-time law firm of Greenberg Traurig, which has armed itself by hiring former New York State DEC Deputy Commissioner and General Consul Steven Russo, an eminent environmental lawyer.
With scandals rampant in Albany, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo might want to put his stamp of disapproval on this type of insider trading. Cuomo has protected us from the scourge of “fracking.” Western New Yorkers love Allegany, so if he saves the park, that will win him votes. National Fuel executives, with their gigantic salaries, funded a quarter-of-a-million-dollar political PAC, but they gave Cuomo only $1,100. He can’t lose significant funding if he goes against them.
Why doesn’t National Fuel hire gas storage space from Southern Tier farmers and pump the funds into their economy? Perhaps it is because it has been paying 1960s storage rates in the park.
Ask Cuomo to tell National Fuel, “Take a hike ... out of Allegany.”
Larry Beahan is conservation chairman of the Sierra Club Niagara Group.