NY Lawmaker Says "Over My Dead Body" Will New Yorkers Suffer PA's Fracking Woes

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

August 31, 2011 | 5:17 PM

A New York Republican State Senator wants to make sure the Empire State avoids the environmental consequences he says natural gas drilling has inflicted on Pennsylvania residents. State Sen. Greg Ball toured gas drilling areas of Pennsylvania before introducing his own legislation. From the Journal News:

Among other things, Ball is calling for a 180-day comment period, which would be three times as long as the current 60 days now called for by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
“I can tell you right now that the pain that I’ve seen here today, and the pain that I experienced first-hand speaking with families and farmers in Pennsylvania, it will be over my dead body before I allow what happened in Pennsylvania to happen here in New York,” said Senator Ball speaking at a recent hearing on hydrofracking in Katonah, N.Y.

Ball’s proposal would force gas drilling companies to pay 150 percent of the market value of the property if fracking causes any damage. And each lease agreement would have to include warnings about potential health impacts. New York is expected to lift its moratorium on drilling this fall.