A small-town Texas mayor from deep in gas country has been making the rounds of several upstate counties this week, warning rural New Yorkers about the toll horizontal gas drilling could take on their towns. The mayor made a push for heavy regulation, says the Times Herald-Record:

"This is a delicate process that has to be regulated," said Calvin Tillman, the mayor of Dish, Texas. "If you do it wrong, ain't nobody gonna want to live here."

Dish recently passed a 90-day moratorium on new gas drilling while the town ponders tougher environmental ordinances.

Earlier: Mayor from Texas gas country to speak

Ulster Common Sense blogger Jeremiah snaps a picture of a horse tied to a parking meter outside Rosita's in Kingston.

This does raise a lot of questions. 1) Does the owner have to pay the same amount at the meter? 2) If the owner has a couple of drinks, is it a violation of the law to ride a horse under the influence? 3) Does Kingston still have horse laws on the books like many towns do?

Reuters has been doing a great job lately of following the debate over natural gas drilling in New York State. Their latest article takes a look at the growing problem of disposing of frack water, which is too salty and contaminant-laden for most wastewater treatment plants to handle.

According to the story, there's a chicken-and-egg problem involved: Critics of the practice don't want the state to issue permits without knowing if gas companies can deal with the waste, but gas companies don't want to invest in expensive waste management technology unless drilling is a sure bet.

Around a third of the millions of gallons of water used in fracturing comes back to the surface where it is either reused, stored on site or trucked to treatment plants.

Conrad said companies that can build crystallizer plants -- specialized waste treatment plants that distill salt out of waste water -- are unwilling to make an investment in New York until the state begins issuing drilling permits.

Upstate New York has bountiful open space, a great climate for raising grassfed meat, and a long tradition of local agriculture. So why is it still hard to find local pasture-raised meat at the grocery store?

Brooklyn food writer Adriana Velez had a great piece recently on her blog, Dinner4Three, about the uphill battle New York State's small farmers face in trying to find a processor.

...[M]eat production in New York State is more scattered and less organized than it is in the west. Demand for grass-fed beef is growing, but farmers worry about committing to the practice when they’re not sure if their meat can be processed and distributed when the animals are ready. It wasn’t always this way. Twenty-five years ago the New York State countryside was dotted with USDA-inspected processors.

To get a full picture of the processor problem, Velez talks to people up and down the distribution chain, from farmer John Bermon to Park Slope Coop buyer Bill Malloy. It's well worth a read.

Police are investigating the death of 22-year-old Erik Shook, who was found dead in his off-campus home on Tuesday, WRGB reports.