KNOX — The Conservation Advisory Council has recommended the town prohibit high-volume hydraulic fracturing, most concerned about risking the permanent contamination of drinking water. The town’s planning board, however, feels giving its own recommendation is premature.

Town board members offered no criticism of the prohibition during their Sept. 9 meeting, where they later voted unanimously to develop a request for proposals that would use solar panels to lower the municipality’s electricity bill and offset its use of fossil fuels, like those extracted by hydrofracturing.

Before moving ahead with a ban, Supervisor Michael Hammond asked the planning board to make its own recommendation. The planning board voted on Sept. 11 to not give a recommendation, seeing no imminent possibility of gas companies drilling in Knox and awaiting the revision of the town’s comprehensive plan, which is expected to address the issue.

Eric Kuck presented the advisory council’s proposal to the town board, suggesting the town’s action alone may not be sufficient since underground wells can be drilled horizontally across borders.

“That would then be producing the same negative net effect than if we had it right here,” Hammond said at the meeting when asked about intensive drilling in nearby towns. “This is why to do this on a regional basis is going to be the key to making all this function.”

All four Hilltowns have extended moratoria on the process and related activities in recent years, local laws that are effectively temporary prohibitions that hedge time to study the impacts. Prohibitions in municipal zoning ordinances were proven legally defensible after the state’s highest court in June, and decisions that came before, ruled in favor of two rural towns in central New York that had passed laws against hydrofracturing.

The adjacent, suburban town of Guilderland, below the Helderberg escarpment, banned the process in 2012.

The Marcellus shale formation that has been a rich source for gas companies in recent years extends beneath the Hilltowns, but it is considered less attractive for drilling here, as it is closer to the surface than in the southern part of the state or elsewhere in the country. Marcellus is not beneath Guilderland, but, at even deeper levels, the Utica shale formation sits below all of Albany County.

Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. is in the process of seeking approval for expanding its pipeline carrying natural gas through Knox and into Massachusetts.

Kuck said the prohibition could fend off development of the Utica formation as the economy and technology surrounding the gas industry changes over time.

“To my way of thinking, it’s sort of a no-brainer, but I know a lot of other people have other opinions on the matter, and that’s why I think it needed bringing up so that we can think about it and discuss it,” said Kuck at the meeting.

Hydrofracturing uses a mix of chemicals and large amounts of water and materials like sand that is forced under hydraulic pressure and into underground shale formations, breaking the rock and exposing deposits of fossil fuels like natural gas and petroleum.

The advisory council’s proposal included the prohibition of the transport and storage of chemicals used in hydrofracturing.

“Due to the nature of Karst topography, the vast water supply system is unimpeded by natural soil filtrations found in other areas. This lack of filtration also allows for rapid transport of water and, more importantly, the threat of rapid diffusion from introduced contaminants,” Kuck writes in the council’s proposal.

The porous limestone — with caves, sinking streams, and sinkholes — is interconnected and complex, and the limestone is prone to absorbing chemicals, he writes; as a result, hydraulic fracturing fluids could permanently contaminate the local water.

In wells where drinking water has been contaminated, near hydrofracturing in Pennsylvania and Texas, a recently published study showed the gas came from problems in hydrofracturing wells and had not migrated from the fractures created by the process itself.

Closer to the sun

The town board voted unanimously to draft a request for proposals for a solar project that would lower its annual $9,500 electricity cost.

A request will come to a vote at the next regular meeting. Hammond expects the town will use a ground-mounted array of photovoltaic panels producing less than 35 kilowatts of power in a lot behind the town hall.

The reduced electric rate the town would pay won’t be settled until a contract is signed. Still, the panels would help the town avoid the price increases and fluctuations that would come without it, said Hammond.

Town officials visited Princetown, a small town where a similar project has been installed. Known as a power purchase agreement, the plan is expected to last 20 years, with the option of renewal. The company installing the panels and selling the energy would be responsible for maintaining the equipment, so the town would have no up-front cost.

The growth of solar energy is helped by tax incentives through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which are funded by surcharges on electricity bills.

Those incentives are scheduled to lessen as the panels gain wider use.

The Knox Planning Board voted on Sept. 11 to forego regulating small-scale solar panels. Chairman Robert Price was the lone dissenting vote. He gave as examples of the need to regulate: the shading of a neighbor’s panels by new construction, the impact on a neighbor’s view by ground-mounted panels, or the concentrated load of a snow-covered panel on a roof.

Other business

In other business at its Sept. 9 meeting, the town board:

— Voted unanimously to appoint Jennifer Geckler as the minutes recorder for the planning board;

— Voted unanimously to appoint Pamela Kleppel to the zoning board of appeals until December 2017, filling a vacancy left by Jay Baumstein;

— Heard from Councilwoman Amy Pokorny that the next public workshop to analyze survey responses for the comprehensive plan will be on Sept. 30 at 7 p.m. in Town Hall.

Resident Anna Wolfe asked the town board to pay planner Nan Stolzenburg to analyze the responses. Stolzenburg recommended the process that the town is following, Pokorny responded, and would be available for any specific questions.

The board did not act on Wolfe’s suggestion. Her husband, Tom Wolfe, is a member of the planning board; and

— Heard from Hammond that New York Municipal Insurance Reciprocal, a not-for-profit insurer, paid the town $710.50 for the interest accrued on the town’s membership contribution.