New York Judge Rules Towns Can Ban Fracking

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

February 22, 2012 | 5:03 PM

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.