Elmont Online

Larry Beahan of Buffalo and Mike White of Steuben County live 130 miles away from each other, and their views on fracking seem at least that far apart.

Yet, strangely, the Buffalo environmentalist and the Southern Tier property owner are equally pessimistic about what once was seen as a likely natural gas boom in the Southern Tier to match one that has transformed northern Pennsylvania.

To Beahan, New York is moving slowly but fatefully toward allowing a kind of natural gas drilling that he says will spoil the environment.

"We're simply not equipped to handle the massive amount of potential contamination" the Buffalo resident said he fears from the hazardous chemicals used in the process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

But to White, the state's slow-going, take-no-risks approach to allowing fracking could crush the industry before it ever gets off the ground.

Southern Tier property owners, truck drivers and blue-collar workers who expected to reap the benefits of the gas beneath their lands are frustrated.

"It's like they've almost lost hope," said White, of Addison, the longtime head of a local landowners association.

Such is the state of the fracking debate in the days before the Department of Environmental Conservation begins a series of public hearings on the issue -- and as the state nears a final decision sometime next year on whether and how to allow drilling.

The hearings, starting Wednesday in Dansville, begin amid signs that the fracking issue is more contentious than ever -- and that the controversy may have sealed the fate of fracking in New York no matter what the state decides.

With environmentalists continuing to press their concerns, at least 15 major New York communities have passed legally dubious fracking bans -- and many, like Buffalo, are well outside the sweet spots in the Marcellus Shale where drilling is expected to be lucrative.

But with that not-in-my-backyard movement growing and the state proposing the nation's toughest fracking controls, gas companies that flocked to the state several years ago are now downsizing or pulling up stakes.

Add it all up, and New York's once-envisioned gas boom is starting to look like a bust.

"I think we're losing the battle," conceded Brad Gill, executive director of the Independent Oil and Gas Operators Association of New York State.