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Think fracking for natural gas means jobs? Think again.

In a new assessment of fracking's potential and risks, the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation projects that if the natural gas industry is permitted to conduct hydraulic fracturing to exploit the state's gas-rich shale deposits, less than a quarter of the jobs would go to people who live in the state.

"A handful of jobs in the drilling industry could cost New Yorkers billions of dollars they don't have," Dusty Horwitt, senior counsel for the Environmental Working Group, testified before the New York City Council environmental protection committee today (Sept. 22, 2011). "That's why it is especially important for New York to proceed carefully."

After analyzing a 1,500-page environmental impact statement on fracking published earlier this month by the state environmental conservation agency, Horwitt said the state plan projects that New Yorkers would not fill 90 percent of local gas industry jobs until the 30 years after drilling begins.

In the meantime, he said, the risks of pollution are daunting. He said the state's plan for regulating fracking doesn't require a large enough buffer zone between drilling operations and water sources. Consequently, he said, the state cannot assure New Yorkers that drinking water supplies will be safe from pollution by fracking chemicals nor from methane released from gas pockets deep in the shale. As Josh Fox's Oscar-nominated film Gasland demonstrates, flammable methane freed from underground fissures can bubble into well water and turn a homeowner's faucet into a torch.

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