But Dryden could soon be synonymous with something more than animals and agriculture. In August 2011, the town passed a zoning ordinance effectively forbidding hydraulic fracturing, the controversial gas extraction method also known as fracking. The ordinance, passed after a feisty local lobbying effort, prompted a lawsuit now being mulled by New York State’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, whose ruling could settle the long-simmering issue of whether the state’s municipalities can ban the drilling process.
Dryden was not the first place to act against fracking, nor the first place where such bans have been subject to legal challenges. Bans are increasingly common in cities, towns and even counties across the country, including Pittsburgh, which did so in 2010, and Highland Park, N.J., a New York City suburb, where the Borough Council outlawed fracking on Sept. 17.
While some of those votes are more symbolic than substantive – Highland Park was not likely to become a gas-drilling center — in the case of Dryden, the stakes could be high.
“It’s going to decide the future of the oil and gas industry in the state of New York,” said Thomas West, a lawyer for Norse Energy Corporation USA, which has sought to have the ban overturned and will file legal briefs on the appeal on Monday.
That local governments like Dryden’s have decided to take matters in their own hands is not surprising. Fracking has been the subject of five years of evaluation by state officials, including a continuing, and some say strategically delayed, “health impact analysis” by the State Health Department — a process whose pace has been criticized by both supporters and opponents of fracking.
“This is not about a D.O.H study,” said Brad Gill, the executive director of Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York, which has lobbied to legalize the drilling technique. “This is about indecisive leadership in the state.”
The study was ordered by the Department of Environmental Conservation, an agency controlled by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who has said the health review will help guide his decision on whether to allow fracking.
Supporters say the mining method could bring thousands of jobs to economically depressed regions in the state’s Southern Tier, a region along the northern border of Pennsylvania.
But Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has also faced strong opposition to the method from environmentalists and others worried about its impact on watersheds and aquifers. Fracking uses water and chemicals to release natural gas trapped in deeply buried shale deposits.
In May, the governor said in an interview that he believed that the state’s health commissioner, Dr. Nivah Shah, would be finished with his department’s review “in the next several weeks,” but, he added, “It’s not done yet.”
But more than a year after the review began, no report has surfaced. In late August, the Health Department recently released a timetable showing that Dr. Shah has been traveling to other states to investigate the mining method, including Texas, where fracking is under way, and Illinois, where he went “to discuss experiences and public health concerns” with shale-gas development.
Asked for an update on the report, Bill Schwarz, a spokesman for the department, said on Wednesday, “The state health commissioner is continuing his analysis, and work on the public health review will continue until he concludes the review is fully informed, comprehensive and best serves the health and safety interests of the citizens of New York.”
Polls, meanwhile, continue to show no consensus on the issue. A Siena College poll conducted last week showed that 43 percent of voters statewide opposed fracking, while 38 percent approved of the method.
Some critics of the process have suggested that the Cuomo administration simply does not want to make a decision because New York voters, who will decide next year whether he gets a second term, are sharply divided.
Asked for comment on the delay, the governor’s press office directed a reporter to comments Mr. Cuomo made in a radio interview in August.
“Look, fracking has obvious economic benefits,” the governor said then. “Every area that has participated in fracking has had increased commercial activity and it has an economic boost effect. Question is, is there a cost to the environment, to health, etc.? And that’s what has to be assessed, and that’s what has to be weighed, and that’s what we’re going through now.”
For her part, Martha Ferger, 89, a longtime Dryden resident and retired biochemist, said she feared the governor had been “just playing it safe so far,” though she still had hope.
“Maybe he can be seen as a national hero that preserved one spot in the country that isn’t ruined,” she said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 23, 2013
A picture caption with an earlier version of this article misstated the given name of a member of the Dryden Resources Awareness Coalition. She is Deborah Cipolla-Dennis, not Joan. (Her wife, also shown, is Joanne Cipolla-Dennis.)
Yahoo Local News – New York Times
http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info/?p=16250
via Great Local News: New York http://newyork.greatlocalnews.info
No comments:
Post a Comment