By LINDA KELLETT

C-S-E News Staff

Ever-widening, the circle of local municipalities exploring or implementing hydrofracking moratoriums expanded last week as village of St. Johnsville and town of Palatine officials sent drafts of local laws to the county planning board or scheduled public hearings on the ordinances.

Also acting on legislation last week were elected officials from the city of Little Falls and the town of Oppenheim. Both of the Herkimer and Fulton counties’ municipalities now have local laws in place temporarily banning the extraction process and storage of natural gas, petroleum and related waste products.

The Montgomery County municipalities’ drafts evolved from boilerplate legislation prepared by David Slottji, an attorney with the Community Environ-mental Defense Council Inc. of Ithaca, who has presented a number of informational sessions about the controversial horizontal drilling process. Slottji met with Palatine officials and about 30 area residents in mid-March.

In like fashion, members of the St. Johnsville Senior Class were on hand during the village’s March 20 monthly board meeting to present an informational slide show about the process.

St. Johnsville Village Clerk Karen Crouse said the well-prepared program was balanced. “They didn’t try to persuade anything one way or the other,” she said; however local hydrofracking opponent Lia Marrero in a March 21 e-mail said the students “made it clear that after having studied the issue of hydrofracking for gas or oil, they did not want it in their village.”

Specifically, the local laws under consideration propose the implementation of one-year moratoriums that would prohibit exploration and extraction activities associated with natural gas and petroleum substances.

Additionally, the proposed laws temporarily ban the underground storage of natural gas and the disposal of wastes connected with natural gas or petroleum extraction, exploration, and production.

Each document, as amended, varies in its specificity to the particular municipality.

For instance, the proposed St. Johnsville law refers to Zimmerman Creek and the Mohawk River: “Zimmerman Creek, an overflow from the municipal domestic potable water supply located in the town of Ephratah, travels through the village to the Mohawk River. At its westerly end, the village also maintains a secondary drilled potable water supply known as the Roland Swartz Well Field.”

It continues: “The high quality of village water has been continuous over many decades. The village’s Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Park and Marina, together with the Little League Park owned by the St. Johnsville Little League Association, offer ample recreational opportunities for the public. In addition, the presence of the historical Margaret Reaney Memorial Library and the Community House, among other structures, add a meaningful cultural aspect the the village.

“To interpose any high risk ground drilling and storage sites within village limits could seriously compromise these water supplies, recreational areas and historic structures,” the draft notes.

Crouse on Monday said village officials last week agreed to send a copy of the St. Johnsville document to the Montgomery County Planning Board for review. A public hearing date on the proposed law is yet to be announced.

Palatine Town Clerk Linda Logan said the public hearing on the Palatine moratorium, which stemmed from Slottji’s presentation, has been set for Wednesday, April 18, at 6 p.m.

As noted in the minutes from the Palatine Town Council’s special March 11 meeting with the attorney, the purpose of the moratorium is to “give the town time to research and get more information about hydrofracking.”

The moratorium reportedly can be extended as many times as needed.