NEW YORK - The deadline for New Yorkers to comment on a "fracking" plan is just weeks away, but some say the draft does nothing to assess the potential risks that hydraulic fracturing may pose to New York schoolkids.



Claire Barnett, founder and executive director of Healthy Schools New York, says her group has mapped school facilities that draw their water from private wells along the Marcellus Shale, the deep-underground rock formation where companies want to drill for natural gas. She says they found more than 100 facilities in 28 counties where the state has not examined the potential risks to school children from the chemicals used in fracking.



"The draft EIS is 1,537 pages and the word 'children' doesn't appear even once, nor does the word 'asthma,' or 'learning disabilities,' and 'child care facilities,' and so forth."



Barnett says more than 50 of the school facilities they identified serve some 18,000 pupils. Her group will release a map today detailing its findings. The deadline is January 11 for the state to accept comments on the fracking plan.



She says her group is calling on the Department of Environmental Conservation to confer with the Departments of Education and Health and together assess risks to children in a number of settings where they learn and play.



"To also look at private schools, and public and private child care centers, and Head Start facilities, because there will be some number of them with private wells."



Barnett says the EPA recently found that chemicals used in the fracking process were responsible for water pollution in Wyoming, and other recent reports raise additional health concerns.



Governor Andrew Cuomo has pledged that he will not let the process go forward unless it is safe.



A news conference is set for 10 a.m. in the Legislative Office Building, Room 130, Albany.



