“It’s not like other businesses,” said Doug Hazlitt, whose family has been growing grapes here since 1852. “We can’t pick up our vines and move to another state.”

The company behind the proposed gas storage facilities — Crestwood Midstream Partners, which is based in Houston — says that it, too, is tied to the area’s unique geology. Crestwood is already allowed to store more than one billion cubic feet of natural gas in salt caverns near Watkins Glen, where it owns the U.S. Salt plant. The new project, it says, will bring new jobs and millions of dollars in investment to a county that has an industrial history but fewer industrial jobs in recent years.

“Certainly if we were starting from scratch and saying, ‘Where would you build a liquefied petroleum gas storage facility?’ you probably wouldn’t put it right there over Seneca Lake, near the wine country,” said Bill Gautreaux, president of Crestwood’s liquids and crude business unit. “But the reality of it is that it already exists.”

The liquefied propane and butane project was first proposed in 2009. And one thing that Crestwood and its adversaries agree on is that the state has taken too long to make a decision.

Mr. Gautreaux said the long wait was harming those in New York who use propane, which is transported from the Gulf of Mexico during the often brutal Northeast winters. “We are literally kind of beside ourselves about it,” he said, adding, “We never could have imagined that it would take this long.”

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has made promoting upstate tourism a priority, and vintners and their allies have pleaded with his administration to reject the plan in order to safeguard what they say is a growing, sustainable and environmentally friendly economic engine.