Cooperstown Chamber Hits Fracking

Natural-gas drilling poses “a direct and material threat” to Otsego County’s business community, the Cooperstown Chamber of Commerce has declared.
And in issuing its statement Monday, Feb. 14, it also released a list of almost 300 entities, including almost 200 Upstate businesses, many local, that have joined the chamber in declaring their opposition.
“Industrial-scale hydrofracking in the region will irreparably damage the essential qualities that make the Cooperstown area an excellent place to live, raise families, farm and work,” the statement reads.
“The issue for us is very simple: It’s about water,” said Ommegang President/CEO Simon Thorpe, who is also a Cooperstown Chamber director.  “If you want to have great beer, you have to have great water.”
Meanwhile, the Oneonta-based Otsego County Chamber is in the midst of its own process of assessing the issue, according to chamber President Rob Robinson.
Thorpe and Larry Bennett, Ommegang’s public relations director, appeared before that chamber’s Business Action Committee Jan. 27, as did Orville Cole, principal in Gastem Inc. of Montreal, which is drilling exploratory wells in Middlefield.
The Business Action Committee, chaired by Steve Sinniger of the Otsego County Farm Bureau, is meeting again Thursday, Feb. 24, but Robinson said deliberations are in the “preliminary stages.”
The result, Robinson said, could be to “endorse, not endorse, or leave it alone.”