Lenape Sues Avon, NY & DEC over Fracking Ban – Seeks $50M
The residents of Avon, NY will have to come up with $50 million if a local driller wins a lawsuit filed earlier this month. Lenape Resources, a small, independent conventional (vertical) natural gas driller in western New York sued Avon, NY and the state Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) because of a broad-based ban on fracking and natural gas activities in the township passed in June.
Avon, in a misguided attempt to ban fracking, drafted and passed a new zoning law so broad it affected not only unconventional shale drilling but also conventionally drilled (vertical) gas wells. At the time, Lanape’s president John Holko threatened to sue both the town and the DEC if the ban was not rescinded (see this MDN story for background on the ban and Holko’s threat of a lawsuit). The ban stayed, the DEC has refused to enforce a 1981 state law that says only the DEC has the power to regulate drilling, so Holko has sued. He’s asking for compensation to reimburse him for the millions the company has invested in wells and other infrastructure in the township, and for lost revenue because he’s had to shut it all down.
Way to go Avon! Three town board members have just bankrupted your township.
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Binghamton, NY’s failed mayor, Matt Ryan, now has the answer to his question direct from the laboratory he hired (with taxpayer money) to test Binghamton’s water: Drilling in Pennsylvania has had zero impact on Binghamton’s water supplies which come from the Susquehanna River.
Finally, a bit of good news for New Yorkers who want to see fracking come to the Empire State. As MDN has pointed out many times, the situation in New York State (will they or won’t they allow fracking?) is like a protracted death scene in an opera. Die already!
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo—someone who apparently has trouble deciding what to have for breakfast, let alone decide a major issue like whether or not to allow fracking—went on the record yesterday saying that the Nov. 29 deadline to release new drilling rules will not be met. Cuomo said the deadline for a new health review, yet another delay thought up by DEC Commissioner Joe Martens and being carried out by State Health Commissioner Nirav Shah, is “open-ended.” The so-called “impartial experts” Nirav Shah has hired to conduct an outside review are anything but impartial, and they’ve been given no firm deadline to turn in a report.
The ignorant mob have won. A group of 83 anti-drilling, enviro-left faculty and staff at the University at Buffalo (UB), with the help of left-leaning mainstream media, have brought enough pressure to bear that UB’s president announced yesterday he is immediately shutting down the seven-month old UB Shale Resources and Society Institute. It’s a sad day for academic freedom and free speech. The inmates now run the asylum at UB.