NY State Hydraulic Fracturing Bans Relative to Population

By Karen Edelstein, NY Program Coordinator

According to industry projections, one of the next big frontiers for Marcellus shale-gas development may be in the New York State Counties bordering northern Pennsylvania. However, after more than four years of discussion, two versions of the Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS), and hundreds of thousands of citizen and professional comments on the SGEIS and regulatory framework, the future for hydrofracturing for natural gas in New York  is still highly contested–both in statewide political and locally-based fora.

This map shows the municipalities, as of July 2013, that have enacted hydrofracking prohibitions, represented relative to the population size of those towns. New York State municipalities began invoking home rule laws as early as 2010 to prohibit high volume hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. Primarily implementing zoning tools, these towns found that while they could not regulate against drilling, outright, they could determine appropriate land uses within the town or village boundaries. In this map, bans are shown as red circles, moratoria are shown as lavender, and movements for bans or moratoria are shown in yellow.

As of June 2013, 61 municipalities have passed permanent bans against HVHF, and 111 municipalities have enacted temporary moratoria while they explore the issue more fully, or draft ban legislation.

Within the area of New York State that overlies the Utica Shale, the major population centers, including Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, Union, Utica, and Albany have all enacted bans or moratoria. This unprecedented movement is the reaction to concerns of residents who do not desire large-scale energy industrialization, and who have been frustrated with the pace at which the New York State government has been finalizing their generic environmental impact statement, health review, and gas extraction regulations. Large urban centers account for more than 13% of the population in the area over the shale-gas formation that have enacted local prohibitions. These municipalities, along with more than 150 more across the region, (accounting for more than 28% of the region’s total population) have taken precautions to protect the air, water, food, and landscape from the potential risks of hydraulic fracturing that other communities in Pennsylvania, Texas, North Dakota, Wyoming, and beyond, have experienced.  An additional 88 towns (representing over 8% of the population over the Utica Shale formation) have grassroots movements that are spearheading discussions on the need and desire for bans or moratoria. On a town-by-town basis, population-dense centers, as well as rural towns and villages, are exercising democracy to determine whether or not they will risk living with this form of industrial development.