EID Marcellus Team
Tom Shepstone, JD Krohn, Nicole Jacobs & Rachael Colley

This week is bittersweet for the EID Marcellus Team as changes are on the horizon. April was the month of anniversaries as we celebrated our first successful year educating the citizens of the Twin Tiers on natural gas development. It’s been a fun year and an incredible learning experience. As we move into our second year, we hope to continue to grow and adapt to the needs of the landowners, business owners and residents here on the ground. This year, and especially this week, is also bringing some changes as we’ll be saying good-bye to a much respected colleague, Bill DesRosiers, and welcoming a new team member, Joe Massaro.

Our Newest Team Member

Joe Massaro from New City, New York will officially be joining the team next week. Please watch for his introductory post later this week. Given his background, experience, and passion we know he’ll fit right in at Energy In Depth – Northeast Marcellus Initiative. He brings a lot of great skills and experience to the table. Please be sure to welcome him to the team when you see him at upcoming events.

Saying Good-Bye to A Legend

As exciting as welcoming Joe to the team is, this week is also a little sad as we say good-bye to Bill DesRosiers. We are all excited for Bill to start a new chapter at Cabot Oil and Gas where he will continue to help educate the residents of Susquehanna County, and across the Northern Tier, on natural gas development. He will, nonetheless, be greatly missed here at Energy In Depth as he has truly helped shape the efforts and goals of this organization from the very beginning.

With that, we wanted to take a moment to do a walk down memory lane as we wish Bill the best of luck.

From the very start, Bill jumped in feet first and took off running to help start a grassroots group that, in one year’s time thanks greatly to his efforts, now receives over 60,000 page views a month. He engaged the opposition, made friends with quite a few of them and many more on our side, stepped up our presence on the web and developed key “business plans” for so many of our activities.  He was a dynamo from the word go. Here’s his first post ever on our website.

My name is Bill desRosiers and I am proud to be a field director for Energy in Depth. Like my colleagues Chris and Tom, I look forward to helping any group or individual interested in the truth about the development of the Marcellus Shale. Please contact me at bill@energyindepth.org.

Before I end this introduction I would like to highlight a particularly strong passage from a recent op-ed by New York Times columnist Joe Nocera entitled About My Support for Natural Gas:

The country has been handed an incredible gift with the Marcellus Shale. With an estimated 500 trillion cubic feet of reserves, it is widely believed to be the second-largest natural gas field ever discovered. Which means that those of you who live near this tremendous resource have two choices. You can play the Not-In-My-Backyard card, employing environmental scare tactics to fight attempts to drill for that gas. Or you can embrace the idea that America needs the Marcellus Shale, accept the inconvenience that the drilling will bring, but insist that it be done properly.

The full column, available here, is an absolute must-read for anyone who wants a straightforward, unvarnished primer on what’s at stake with respect to natural gas development in the region. Joe Nocera is no shill for the oil and gas industry — but he’s no sucker either. He knows that the facts associated with Marcellus exploration don’t quite line up with the narrative being advanced by the other side. We know that too, and hopefully soon, so will everyone else who lives up in our area.

In a year’s time Bill has covered every kind of event related to natural gas from picnics with landowners to scores of meetings on pipelines, compressor stations, and even distribution to homes and businesses. His passion for this job has always been evident in every project he undertook. It hasn’t always been easy, as this next video of a very violent member of the opposition will show, but he never let the more trying times get him down.

And just for fun, here are some of Bill’s posts from the last year.

http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/tammy-manning-victim-of-activist-junk-science/8640/

http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/marcellus-shale-ambulance-chasers-on-the-loose-in-pennsylvania/8152/

http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/serfdom-coming-to-a-town-near-you/7099/

http://eidmarcellus.org/blog/sign-up-sign-down/2816/

Anyway, what we are trying to say is, Bill you will really be missed by all of us. You have certainly left some big shoes to fill and while we know Joe is more than up for the task, no one will ever be able to replace you either. We all wish you the best of luck at your new position and can’t wait to see the amazing things you are going to do for Cabot.

If you haven’t already done so, please take a moment to wish Bill well in the comments!

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