Allegany County towns seek to ban oil and gas drilling to prevent hydraulic fracturing.
The town of Burns, located in the northeast corner of Allegany County, is in the process of banning further oil and gas drilling, which includes hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, according to Allegany County planner, Keir Dirlam. According to Lauren Oliver, Burns town supervisor, the town had a public input meeting this past June and will have a hearing on October 29th, 2014, to address the issue.
Oliver said the Town Board members are currently split on their opinions for a ban. He said “All agree that the financial boost would be a great thing, but at what cost?” Most people he talked to are in favor of the ban, but there are several larger landowners against it.
Dirlam stated in addition, the town and village of Alfred have moratoria (temporary bans) on oil and gas drilling and are seeking to change their existing zoning laws. According to David Slottje, Community Environmental Defense Council (CEDC) co-founder, this would add these towns to around 200 other towns in New York State, have placed bans on oil and gas drilling to prevent hydraulic fracturing.
CEDC, a non-profit organization, works with towns interested in banning or placing moratoria on oil and gas drilling in their town as more Allegany towns may pass a ban. He said, “We are working with multiple communities [in Allegany County] on bans and moratoria.” Dirlam was unaware of any pending bans in Caneadea.
David Slottje explained these bans are legal under the New York State Environmental Conservation Law ECL 23-0303 subsection 2, that allows towns and villages to pass laws to protect the “health, safety, and welfare” of its residents. Four court cases involving Middlefield, Avon, Dryden, and Banton, NY and the oil and gas industry, were brought to the NY court system David Slottje said. The towns won at all three levels of the state court, the Supreme, Appellate Division, and Court of Appeals; and on June 30th, 2014, the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court in the state, ruled in favor of the towns. This ended the court cases.
The bans, however, do not prohibit already existing oil and gas drilling. Dirlam said, “The way these laws have been written is that if you have an operating gas or oil well, then you can continue, but if you have to change it significantly then you cannot.” According to Dirlam, these bans are all or nothing. Towns cannot pick and choose fracturing methods.
Dirlam explained the oil and gas industry has been a large part of the county’s economy since the 1870s, and the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has 10,000 mapped wells in the county.
According to Helen Slottje, co-founder of CEDC, the DEC estimated 30,000 unmapped oil and gas wells in New York. She said because of these unmapped wells, there are dangers and potential problems for drilling new ones, because the old wells were not adequately plugged.
Allegany has a lot of support to continue using the natural resources said Dirlam. On the flip side, he said, there is nice clean water and a country setting.
“The county, over the last year,” he said, “has tried to keep a rather neutral stance in what they have said and done.” Though the bans must come from the towns and villages, Dirlam said the the county has made recommendations for towns to control road uses, so if oil and gas trucks were to come in, they would not destroy local roads.
Sarah McCloy, a junior and resident of Elizabeth, West Virginia has seen hydraulic fracturing impact her neighboring town of Parkersburg. She said there have been both positive and negative effects. There has been economic growth, but for a limited amount of people. “There hasn’t actually been a huge influx of jobs,” she said. “Most of the jobs require a certain technical expertise. So people from outside the community come in.” She said fracking companies have been giving out scholarships to students in the area to “convince people that [hydraulic fracturing] is a good thing.”
Helen Slottje said New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, is not addressing the issue of hydraulic fracturing for political reasons as he is up for reelection this November. She said, “These community level prohibitions are a first step, but we are still waiting for Governor Cuomo to step up and work on a statewide prohibition.”