Shale Drilling in NY is Over – High Court Upholds Town Bans
This is a very sad day indeed. We’ve just received word that New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, has reaffirmed two lower court rulings that allows entire townships in the state to strip away property owners’ rights to allow drilling, in contravention to the U.S. Constitution. The two cases, long chronicled here on MDN, are the “Middlefield” and “Dryden” cases (see NY Pro-Drillers File Final Briefs in Dryden/Middlefield Cases for background). What does it mean? In our opinion it means there will never be any meaningful shale drilling in New York. No driller in his right mind will roll the dice, lock up thousands of acres by spending millions of dollars, just to see it all disappear at the next town board election with a vote by 3 of 5 people. What a complete and utter tragedy this is for freedom-loving Americans who happen to live in the increasingly communistic state of New York. Below is a copy of the decision…
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Yesterday two sleazy New York City politicians–Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee Chairman Robert Sweeney–announced that, as they have done for the last three years running, they have arm-twisted downstate Democrats to approve an Assembly bill that would continue to ban hydraulic fracturing for (unbelievably) another three years–even though it’s already been banned for six years! Assembly bill A.5424-B was passed mostly along party lines. Donna Lupardo-D, whose district includes potential drilling locations in Broome County, NY, shamefully voted “yes” to pass it (she needs to be tossed at the next election). Not that any of it makes a hill of beans worth of difference. It will never pass the Republican-controlled Senate in NY…
Yesterday was an important day for the future of fracking in New York State. Attorneys Tom West (from Albany) and Scott Kurkoski (from Binghamton) argued before the New York State Court of Appeals, NY’s highest court, in the Dryden and Middlefield town ban cases. MDN has some of the comments made at the trial by both sides, a statement from the Joint Landowner’s Coalition of New York (JLCNY), and a rough estimate of when a decision will be rendered…
Let’s give credit where it’s due. Gannett repeatedly filed Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests to get schedule details about former Commissioner of the New York State Dept. of Health (DOH) Nirav Shah. Gannett has been fishing to see who Shah talked to in his now 1.5+ year “review” of proposed fracking regulations–a process that Shah himself said should only take a few weeks to complete (see