On Wednesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s administration announced that hydraulic fracturing will be banned in New York State. The governor, who’d once been prepared to adopt the practice to revive struggling economies, determined that there were too many health risks for fracking to move forward in the state.
Hydraulic fracturing is a controversial new method for extracting natural gas and oil from rock formations deep underground by injecting water, sand and chemicals at high pressures. Fracking has become a battleground between proponents who claim the practice can bring profits and create a sustainable, non-imported energy source, and critics who warn that public health and the environment could be harmed by fracking.
Environmentalists have also argued that there are already energy alternatives to foreign oil that are safer than fracking, like solar energy, which has been lauded as an inexhaustible and pollution-free source of energy.
Though Cuomo acknowledged that it seems like there’s no economic alternative to fracking for struggling communities along the New York/Pennsylvania border, he ultimately decided that fracking wasn’t the answer to a problem that still needs to be solved. Though he chose to back plans for casino proposals across the state Wednesday, few of them are in the areas that would have benefited from fracking.
“Our citizens in the Southern Tier have had to watch their neighbors and friends across the border in Pennsylvania thriving economically,” Karen Moreau, the executive director of the New York State Petroleum Council, told the New York Times. “It’s like they were a kid in a candy store window, looking through the window, and not able to touch that opportunity.”
Cuomo seemed reluctant to decide whether or not to uphold New York’s de facto ban on fracking, but a new health study seems to have made up his mind. Acting state health commissioner Dr. Howard A. Zucker reported that fracking could cause “significant public health risks” including water contamination and air pollution. He added that there was not enough evidence to rule that fracking was safe.
“We cannot afford to make a mistake,” he said in a cabinet meeting presentation in Albany. “The potential risks are too great. In fact, they are not even fully known.”
Joseph Martens, the state environmental conservation commissioner, also said that, “The economic benefits are clearly far lower than originally forecast.”
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