Lost among that big ol’ pile of responses to a recent report on emails between the gas industry and the Department of Environmental Conservation? A letter to the editor from the DEC itself.
DEC spokeswoman Emily DeSantis penned a letter in today’s Times Union, where the original story on correspondence between DEC and the natural-gas industry appeared. (A Freedom of Information request by an environmental group found that DEC shared a draft summary of its hydrofracking regulations about a month before it was released to the public.)
In the letter, DeSantis calls any suggestion of impropriety “irresponsible and uninformed.”
“This is a routine process. DEC could not possibly fully understand the potential costs of regulations without seeking input from the affected regulated entities,” she wrote. “DEC openly acknowledged industry’s involvement when the regulations were released.”
Earlier today, a group of Senate Democrats called on the DEC to offer a “full explanation of DEC’s actions in this case.”