Home Rule Didn’t Work in PA, So Why Would it in NY?
The headline of this post is the point of a press release issued earlier this week by the Dryden Safe Energy Coalition (DSEC), a group based near Ithaca, NY that seeks to remove the hype and emotion from the debate over hydraulic fracturing and shale gas drilling and instead provide science and facts. The DSEC issued a press release (below) which makes the point that Pennsylvania has had a lot more experience with shale gas drilling than New York and has found that a “patchwork quilt of local regulations” on the municipal level did not work, so PA replaced home rule with statewide regulations.
The DSEC says: “If local home rule does not work in Pennsylvania, it is clear it will not be workable in New York.” (Listen up, NY Republican State Senator James Seward.)
From the DSEC press release:
Read More “Home Rule Didn’t Work in PA, So Why Would it in NY?”
MDN editor Jim Willis interviewed NY State Senator Tom Libous last Friday, March 2nd. Sen. Libous is a member of Gov. Cuomo’s Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel and an influential member of the NY Senate, holding the post of Deputy Majority Leader. We spoke about his recent remarks in the New York Times and whether or not his support for drilling has changed. We also spoke about the Advisory Panel’s work and where things go from here. It’s a short and informative interview, especially for New York’s landowners who are wondering whether, and when, drilling might begin in New York.
Residents who live in New York townships that can’t seem to wait to ban drilling should be aware of something. These bans are bans of all gas drilling, not just horizontal hydraulic fracturing. That’s what residents in Enfield (Tompkins County), NY found out on Wednesday at a meeting with the town attorney. The Enfield town board plans to vote to enact a one-year moratorium in late April or early May, and the moratorium is on vertical as well as horizontal gas well drilling.
Yesterday, Tompkins County (NY) Supreme Court Judge Phillip Rumsey handed anti-drillers a first, and likely short-lived, victory. He ruled that the Town of Dryden, located near Ithaca, has the right to ban shale gas drilling. As with many legal issues, this one is complicated, so let’s take a look at the case, Judge Rumsey’s decision, and what happens next.
In an interview yesterday with the editorial board of the Syracuse Post-Standard, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said a decision about whether or not to allow high volume hydraulic fracturing to move forward in the state is “a couple of months” away.
A group of Chenango County, NY officials have come up with a great idea: Use the abandoned Camp Pharsalia prison facility in a very rural part of the county (sits on 52 acres, owned by the state) to drill several test Marcellus and Utica Shale wells, and use it as a living laboratory with everyone involved—the state, the drilling industry, environmental groups and academe. In other words, let’s just test this out to see if there are any problems. The experiment would be a public-private partnership between the state and the drilling industry. Brilliant!
Are the political winds shifting in New York State among the politicians that have been staunch supporters of gas drilling? There’s perhaps no stronger supporter among elected politicians in Albany than Tom Libous, a powerful state senator from Binghamton. Sen. Libous is the deputy majority leader of the NYS Senate and a member of the DEC’s Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel (
As part of the process to enact new drilling regulations in New York State, Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Joe Martens appointed a Hydraulic Fracturing Advisory Panel last July to make recommendations to the DEC on how to oversee, monitor and enforce new shale drilling regulations in the state (