The agency announced on Tuesday that it was canceling an all-day hearing that had been scheduled for Thursday at the OnCenter Complex Convention Center in Syracuse after Onondaga County officials expressed concern that they had not been given enough time to prepare security in anticipation of rallies and protests at the event.
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But university officials countered that they had raised the price to cover security and logistical costs after consulting local law enforcement officials, special interest groups and others that indicated that as many as 8,000 people could show up for the hearing, far more than the 1,200 participants that the E.P.A. had pre-registered for the event.
“Because we are a public university and responsible to the taxpayer, and as we do for all contracted events, a price was developed to ensure that the campus would remain cost-neutral,” the university’s interim president, C. Peter Magrath, and its vice president for administration, James Van Voorst, said in a joint statement.
The E.P.A. is now hunting for a new site and hopes to hold the hearing in September.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/8000-people-e-p-a-defers-hearing-on-fracking/