Today, New York's highest court is expected to hear arguments in lawsuits that are seeking to overturn local regulations that ban hydraulic fracturing, a method which attempts to free trapped gas in rock via chemically-treated water, Bloomberg said. The court challenge is just another hurdle of fracking supporters as State Governor Andrew Cuomo could decide by next year whether to lift a six year-old state moratorium on the drilling method.
In 2008, the state of New York had barred the controversial practice while conducting a study on the environmental effects of fracking. Fracking, which is currently allowed in over 30 states in the US, is banned in over 75 towns in the New York state. On the other hand, Ithaca consultant Karen Edelstein affiliated with FracTracker Alliance, which analyzes the effects of oil and gas drilling, said over 40 resolutions have already been passed in support of the process.
The rise in popularity of fracking as the favored tool to produce oil and gas has been largely attributed to economic reasons. Because of the process, it has helped boost the oil production in the US to the highest level in over a quarter-century and has brought the country closer to energy independence that it has been in nearly 30 years, Bloomberg said.
Attorney Scoot Kurkoski, who has been representing a dairy farm looking to overturn a local ban on fracking, argued that the state should tackle on who will regulate fracking, as oppose to whether banning the process.
In a phone interview, he said, "Will New York say that its 900 towns get to make the decision about New York's energy policy or will that be a decision that's left to the state?"
Bloomberg said that the main issue in the appeals case s that whether the current Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Law of the state prevents local governments from enacting zoning ordinances that prohibited fracking to recover oil and gas.
Managing attorney Deborah Goldberg for the nonprofit group EarthJustice, who represents a town in the appeal, said, "There are plenty of other states around the country that allow bans and the industry operates in those states. The claims that they're going to be completely unable to invest here in my mind are totally incredible."
