Cuomo Bans Fracking in New York

Source DC Bureau.org California’s Brown Opens Up the Monterey Shale Starting January 15 –

It has been a terrible year for environmentalists. Anti-environmental interests had huge wins in the Congressional midterms. State legislatures became even more entrenched. Republicans, who now control Congressional funding, will challenge relentlessly the EPA.

So if a line in the sand is to be drawn, it will be by the handful of politicians who control blue states. The most important of these states are California and New York. Remarkably, Governor Jerry Brown signed on September 20 a bill allowing fracking in California’s Monterey Shale. Environmentalists considered Brown’s endorsement of fracking a huge setback. Ironically, the Monterey Shale adjoins some of the most dangerous earthquake faults in the world.

Then on a huge news day – starting with President Obama establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba – Governor Andrew Cuomo did something unusual for a New York politician. He turned his back on Wall Street by banning fracking in New York State.  Much of the fracking boom is fueled by Wall Street speculation.  The political pressure on Cuomo was enormous. At stake were New York City’s water supply and the state’s most important agricultural region.

Cuomo’s decision was a win for environmentalists as well as New York City Democrats who feared the loss of support if the governor had sided with the drilling interests.

Like fracking, Wall Street supports the hard sell on nuclear power, and, more recently, Canadian oil sands.  Fracking, like nuclear and oil sands, is fraught with health, environmental and even geological dangers. The fact that Cuomo made this decision as oil and gas prices are plummeting to new lows gave the governor some political cover. But the political reality is that New York has a ban and California does not.

Howard Zucker, the acting Commissioner of Health, announcing the ban, said:  “I cannot support high volume hydraulic fracturing in the great state of New York.”

Zucker made the statement during the year-end cabinet meeting held by Gov. Cuomo at his office in Albany.  According to The New York Times, “It came amid increased calls by environmentalists to ban fracking, which uses water and chemicals to release natural gas trapped in deeply buried shale deposits.”

In 2012 environmentalists feared Cuomo was going to allow fracking in limited areas of New York State.  The Times reported, “Mr. Cuomo had focused a great amount of attention on trying to improve the economic climate in upstate New York, and fracking appeared to offer a way to bring new life to struggling areas atop the Marcellus Shale, a gigantic subterranean deposit of trapped gas that extends across much of New York State, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.”

The long anticipated, yearend decision is Cuomo’s holiday present to the many environmental groups that worked tirelessly for the ban.