New York Judge Rules Town Can Ban Gas Hydrofracking

[alp227]

In a victory for opponents of the drilling process known as hydrofracking, a New York State judge ruled on Tuesday that the upstate town of Dryden in Tompkins County can ban natural gas drilling within its boundaries.

In August, Dryden’s Town Board used its zoning laws to pass a drilling ban, one salvo in a battle that is playing out nationwide as energy companies move to drill in densely populated areas. A month after the ban’s passage, Anschutz Exploration Corporation, a Colorado driller with 22,200 acres under lease in the town, filed a lawsuit arguing that the town’s authority did not extend to regulating or prohibiting gas drilling.

In a decision issued on Tuesday, Justice Phillip R. Rumsey of State Supreme Court said that state law does not preclude a municipality from using its power to regulate land use to ban oil and natural gas production. The ruling is the first in New York to affirm local powers in the controversy over drilling in the Marcellus Shale, a gas deposit under a large area of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

It is a victory for hydrofracking opponents as New York State regulators revise an environmental impact document and propose drilling regulations to decide whether to allow the drilling and under what conditions. Dozens of other municipalities in New York have also adopted drilling bans and limits.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/nyregion/town-can-ban-hydrofracking-ny-judge-rules.html

[Rhiannon12866]

1. K&R! Terrific news! "One small step for man..."

BTW, welcome home!

[DesertFlower]

2. great news. nt

[Capobvious]

3. thats great news!

Now only if other counties will come to their senses and ban it so their residents won't be poisoned

[BlancheSplanchnik]

4. Good!

There are a lot of smart and very dedicated people working behind the scenes on this issue to educate town boards in many small towns out in Ontario and Livingston counties. I know some of them.

Thank god that judge wasn't some CONservative "activist"! May every fight find a good judge!

[Ikonoklast]

5. This will be appealed.

If the leasing company paid money in good faith to citizens for drilling rights, do the lessors now have to return that money?

Can a municipality pass ex post facto laws if drilling permits were already issued by the state?

[Earth_First]

6. FANTASTIC!

A huge victory for the residents of Thompkins County and a precedent for the residents of New York State!

[Fortran]

7. This won't survive a federal challenge. I think most of the hysteria over fracking is unjustified..

hydraulic and sand fracturing has been done in southern Illinois for over 50 years and there hasn't been any evidence of damage or injury to anyone in that area. For sure no earthquakes. All this opposition to energy production will just drive the price up, I don't think that will please most people. (I also want us to build more nuclear power stations...far less harmful and polluting than fossil fueled generation...and as to solar and wind, they are fine but haven't got the capacity to meet world energy requirements, not by a very long shot)

[bluetexas]

10. I think you are wrong.

Does anyone still use Fortran? Or COBOL?

[Fortran]

14. Wrong about the challenge? Well I guess we will see. I still use Fortran for a few special

scientific applications...because I'm comfortable with it, it does what I want and I own the compiler and the hardware it's installed on.

[RC]

15. I used to know Apple's version of Basic.

There are a few place in North Dakota where you can now light the water from your tap on fire, thanks to frackin.

[Fortran]

21. Where are these places? I'm certainly willing to look at evidence.

...

[RC]

24. Start with these

The flaming water taps were in the North Dakota newspapers. I still lived there at the time.

CAN YOU DO THIS WITH YOUR TAP WATER?

Incidents where hydraulic fracturing is a suspected cause of drinking water contamination
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/amall/incidents_where_hydraulic_frac.html

Carcinogens injected into gas wells, report says Millions of gallons of dangerous chemicals used...
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/carcinogens-injected-into-gas-wells-report-says-millions-of-gallons-of-dangerous-chemicals-used-t/question-1689463/

[Fortran]

25. It's interesting that many of these anecdotes (I didn't yet read them all) are provided by people

who didn't have title or rights to subsurface minerals. I don't blame them for wanting to get on the $$ bandwagon.

[mistertrickster]

29. Or maybe they just don't want their tap water to catch on fire.

What a shit head you are.

[blue neen]

30. That sounds like one of those talking points that drillers like to throw around.

This may come as a complete surprise, but there are people out there who don't give a rat's ass about the money.

Some of us value our lives over money.

[PA Democrat]

32. It looks as though that poster has succumbed to methane fumes.

Posting Priveleges Revoked.

[PA Democrat]

31. So all of the people who have complained of water contamination

are faking illness and somehow setting their own well water on fire for financial gain through a lawsuit? Really? You want to go there? The EPA concluded 25 years ago that fracking could and had resulted in groundwater contamination. I suppose the EPA is operating on anecdotal evidence as well?

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/pdf/201108/20110804ewg_cracks_in_the_facade.pdf

And your contention that the only people complaining are those who do not stand to gain financially is wrong as well. In fact many people who have signed leases with the drilling companies have risked being sued themselves for speaking out against the corrupt and deceptive practices used by the companies to get them to sign the leases. They risk a lawsuit because the leases all contain a confidentiality clause. The truth is that the companies are forced by law to disclose the risks to their shareholders but not to the landowners they exploit for financial gain.

As natural gas development has pushed into
populated areas, gas drillers have consistently sent
their shareholders and potential investors daunting
lists of possible mishaps, including leaks, spills,
explosions, bodily injury, limited insurance coverage
– and death.

The reason for these warnings: federal law, enforced by
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, aims to
protect investors against fraud by requiring companies
that sell stock to disclose “the most significant factors
that make the offering speculative or risky.”

But according to landowners, attorneys and industry
documents, gas drillers paint a far more benign picture
in the millions of unregulated transactions in which
they persuade landowners to lease their property for
drilling in exchange for a share of the proceeds. In its
filings with the SEC, Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake
Energy Corp., the nation’s second-largest natural gas
producer, proudly called its aggressive pursuit of these
leases a multi-million-acre “land grab.”

In personal interviews, nearly two dozen landowners
who live atop the gas-and-oil-rich Marcellus and
Utica shale formations that stretch from New York
to Kentucky told Environmental Working Group
researchers that drilling industry representatives, often
known as “landmen,” never mentioned possible risks
to their water supplies or health as they negotiated
gas-drilling leases. The landowners, in Maryland, New
York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, said that some
landmen even denied that any such risks exist – despite
SEC filings to the contrary by multiple companies
including Chesapeake, Irving, Tex.-based Exxon Mobil
Corp. and Houston-based ConocoPhillips.

http://static.ewg.org/pdf/Drilling_Doublespeak.pdf


Those poor gas companies. They are the true victims here!

[hootinholler]

18. Why do you think this will be overturned?

[Fortran]

20. Because allowing individual communities to control subsurface resources would lead to complete chaos

Can you imagine the litigation when some burgs decide the town in the next county has been "stealing" their water, for example, and decide to sue them? I just don't think the federal courts would permit it.

[hootinholler]

23. In my understanding courts don't permit things

Nor do they restrict things, technically, laws do that part. Something about rights not enumerated are reserved to the States and The People, I think might be in play here.

The water rights scenarios you describe happen all the time. Plus who better to know their watershed than the community?

[Fortran]

26. You don't think the 9th Circuit in California essentially "permitted" same-sex marriage through thei

ruling? Deciding on which laws shall permit or deny certain things is the only legitimate role OF courts.

It's amusing how 'states rights' are hated and loved at the same time, isn't it?

[shcrane71]

8. Yay!

[grahamhgreen]

9. YeeHaw!

[FourScore]

11. That's my neighboring town!!! WooHoo!

This is great news!!

[alp227]

12. Just remembered I spent my first 2 years in THAT county!

[paulk]

17. I lived in Dryden back in the mid seventies...

that they filed this suit was kind of a surprise, since Dryden has always been one of the more conservative towns in that area, imo...

I wonder - has there been an influx of Ithaca folks to that area or something?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

13. Anschutz Exploration Corporation

A month after the ban’s passage, Anschutz Exploration Corporation, a Colorado driller with 22,200 acres under lease in the town, filed a lawsuit arguing that the town’s authority did not extend to regulating or prohibiting gas drilling.

"Anschutz Exploration Corporation," as in Philip Anschutz, the guy who runs the Washington Examiner and all the other papers in the Examiner chain? The one who used to own the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad?

Why, yes: Philip Anschutz.

[Uncle Joe]

16. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, alp.

[truebrit71]

19. Excellent news!

[maddezmom]

22. good news

[sarcasmo]

27. Kick!

[UpInArms]

28. kicking and recommended!

:kick: