State senator Cecilia Tkaczyk, an outspoken opponent of hydrofracking, is proposing new legislation that would prohibit out-of-state drillers from disposing of fracking waste in New York State.
Senator Tkaczyk’s bill would ban “the treatment, discharge, disposal, transportation or storage of high volume hydraulic fracturing waste products in New York State.” While this type of fracking is not currently being conducted in New York, landfills and treatment facilities in the state are accepting tens of thousands of tons of fracking waste from sites in Pennsylvania. Read more
Two upstate New York towns that faced lawsuits over their gas drilling bans have won in appeals court, delivering a major victory to proponents of town "home rule."
Above: Screenshot of a video from a Wednesday morning press conference by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and fellow Assembly Democrats on a bill that, if passed into law, will place a two-year moratorium on fracking in New York State. Source: The Albany Times-Union's Capitol Confidential blog. Watch the full video below.
A bill placing a two-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in New York State passed the Assembly by a wide margin on Wednesday, March 6, and is now headed for the Senate, according to several news reports.
Two towns in New York City's Catskills watershed passed bans on gas drilling on Tuesday: Andes, near the Pepacton Reservoir in Delaware County, and Olive, near the Ashokan Reservoir in Ulster County. Both Andes and Olive had previously passed temporary moratoriums on the practice.
Because of their overlap with the watershed that supplies New York City's drinking water, neither town was likely to see gas drilling, at least in the near future. But both had large citizen movements in support of passing a ban, in case the Department of Environmental Conservation reverses its current stance against drilling within the New York City watershed. Read more
New York State is slated to miss a key Wednesday deadline in the long march toward issuing regulations on hydrofracking.
State health commissioner Nirav Shah announced Tuesday, in a letter to Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) commissioner Joseph Martens, that his agency's ongoing review of the effects of hydrofracking on human health would not be finished by its Wednesday due date. Several large-scale studies, including a progress report from an ongoing EPA study of hydrofracking's effects on drinking water, have been released recently, and Shah told Martens that his agency needed time to incorporate them into the review.
In the letter, Shah urged Martens to put the brakes on fracking regulations until the Department of Health (DOH) finishes its review:
The time to ensure the impacts on public health are properly considered is before a state permits drilling. Other states began serious health reviews only after proceeding with widespread HVHF [high volume hydraulic fracturing]. Read more
The Ulster County town of Olive is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a ban on gas drilling and petroleum extraction within town borders. A hearing on the proposed local law was held on Monday, February 11.
The new local law -- embedded below -- contains a few key differences from the town's 2012 moratorium. No longer included is a waiver that would allow gas companies to apply directly to the town board for an exemption from the law. Also, unlike the moratorium, the new law does not include language specifically banning the transport of fracking waste on roads within the town.
The vote will be taken at the town's regular board meeting, 7:30pm at the town hall on Bostock Road in Shokan. Read more
This morning, a joint legislative budget hearing was packed to the gills as Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Joe Martens testified to legislators about hydraulic fracturing.
Not content to ban "fracking" for natural gas within town borders, Woodstock's town board has voted to petition New York State to make hydraulic fracturing a criminal offense.
While the mainstream focus of the anti-fracking movement so far has been on pressuring the state to ban hydrofracking, or not to adopt regulations that would permit it, a movement to criminalize the technique has sprung up among the more uncompromising groups in the loose coalition of citizen activists that want to keep the gas drilling technique out of New York State. Read more
The debate over how hydraulic fracturing will be regulated in towns across New York came to the Schoharie County town of Cobleskill two weeks ago at a town board meeting where Town Supervisor Tom Murray clashed with anti-fracking activists.
New York State is currently accepting public comments on its latest draft of gas drilling regulations. Helen Slottje, a lawyer who has been prominent in the movement to pass town bans on gas drilling, is hosting a series of public forums this week on the revised regulations in an effort to gather more public comments from fracking opponents. The third and last of these forums will be held in Cooperstown tonight.
