EPA fracking meeting: First moved, now postponed

This week, the EPA dropped a last-minute bombshell on a planned meeting to discuss the risks of hydraulic fracturing: Three days before the meeting, they moved it from Binghamton to Syracuse.

But it seems the last-minute venue change didn't deter thousands of protestors who had planned to attend -- and now the Syracuse venue is getting cold feet. The meeting's been postponed til some unspecified future date:

Oncenter representatives said the Thursday date was too close to accommodate the expected crowd for the fracking forum.

"We have a beautiful convention center here that can easily accommodate 1,000 or 1,200 people, but in the last day we continued to get calls about additional people, and that number is easily growing to more than 5,000,” [Sandy] Baker said. “In order to accommodate all of the safety issues, we need more time to plan this.”

Actually, this makes sense. A couple of days is not enough time for the city, the county, the Oncenter and the EPA to work out the logistical details of an event that could draw thousands of New York State's most furious citizens from both sides of the gas-drilling divide. But all the back and forth doesn't bode well, either for the event or for the public's faith in the regulatory process. Commenter "bcdiogenes" writes with a dollop of sarcasm:

Can we make it more likely that fewer people will be able to attend? Can we make it more likely that people's concerns won't be heard until the EPA has already made their decision?