New York Judge Rules Towns Can Ban Fracking

A New York State judge says local gov­ern­ments have the right to ban frack­ing within their borders.

More from the Inno­va­tion Trail:

In a deci­sion released Tues­day, the state Supreme Court in Cort­land County upheld the Town of Dryden’s ban on drilling.

In his deci­sion, Supreme Court Jus­tice Phillip R. Rum­sey says New York’s oil and gas law gives the state the author­ity to decide how, but not where, drilling can be done.

“Under this con­struc­tion, local gov­ern­ments may exer­cise their pow­ers to reg­u­late land use to deter­mine where within their bor­ders gas drilling may or may not take place, while DEC reg­u­lates all tech­ni­cal oper­a­tional mat­ters on a con­sis­tent statewide basis in loca­tions where oper­a­tions are per­mit­ted by local law,” [he wrote.]

The deci­sion will come as a relief to the dozens of other towns in New York that have banned  or placed mora­to­ri­ums on drilling.

In Penn­syl­va­nia, of course, a new law has lim­ited munic­i­pal­i­ties’ abil­ity to reg­u­late drilling. The new impact fee- now known as Act 13 — bars local gov­ern­ments from keep­ing drilling oper­a­tions out of any­thing except a dense res­i­den­tial zone. The lawyer rep­re­sent­ing the com­pany who chal­lenged the New York town’s frack­ing ban pointed out the dis­par­ity to the Inno­va­tion Trail:

[Anschultz lawyer Tom] West notes that the Dry­den deci­sion runs counter to that of Pennsylvania.

“Penn­syl­va­nia kept the author­ity of munic­i­pal­i­ties to reg­u­late some aspects of nat­ural gas activ­i­ties but required the munic­i­pal­i­ties to declare that drilling is a per­mit­ted use in every zone. So they’ve essen­tially taken the oppo­site posi­tion say­ing munic­i­pal­i­ties can­not ban nat­ural gas drilling.”

The rul­ing is far from final, and the drilling com­pany will likely appeal. Despite its name, New York’s Supreme Courts are rel­a­tively low on the state’s judi­cial ladder.