Update
Five minutes after original post: see first comment. "Anonymous" says New York State does have a map of its gas and oil wells. Memo to self: forward this post to the EPA. One has to really wonder about the EPA.
Original Post
Link here.I assume "anon 1" has additional reasons for sending me this link but I was flabbergasted to read this advice from the EPA to New York State:
The federal agency also wants New York to develop a map of gas wells and to update it at least monthly to provide more information on drilling activities to the public.A map! Update it at least monthly? Give me a break!
Neither the EPA nor the state has a map of gas wells in New York! And folks wonder why South Korea is light years ahead of the US in applied technology.
I have looked at a fair number of mineral/oil/gas sites for sites in the midwest/west -- never thought of looking at the New York (I don't even know if it exists) -- and have remarked on one occasion: the NDIC site is the best of the lot. And not by a small bit, but by a large margin.
I was lucky enough to "grow up" on the NDIC GIS map server. The first time I ever went to it, it seemed a bit foreign -- in fact, I think it was the first time I learned about "GIS." But with no instructions, I figured it out fairly quickly. There are still (a lot of) things I don't know about the NDIC GIS map server, I assume, but that's a personal problem, as we used to say in the Air Force.
GIS is not a trivial event. It's huge. I am impressed that North Dakota state has it. I think there is a private app for locating wells, but that would be the next best thing the NDIC could do: provide an app (or multiple tablet apps for the Williston Basin).
New York State has no map of its gas wells! I think there are at least four interactive, dynamic maps for North Dakota: NDIC, ESER, UND, and that app.
