The Atlantic Chapter Gas Task Force Co-chairs applaud Governor Cuomo’s historic decision to prohibit high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing (HVHHF, or fracking) in New York State. Finally making good on his promise to “let the science decide,” the governor has given the hundreds of thousands of concerned residents who make up New York State’s burgeoning anti-fracking movement the best holiday gift ever.
For those of us who have been on the front lines of this struggle, the governor’s decision represents a major victory in a seven-year statewide campaign to prevent fracking from gaining a foothold in New York State. From the beginning of this movement, the Atlantic Chapter played a key role in pressuring the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to invoke the SEQRA (State Environmental Quality Review Act) process and issue a draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (dSGEIS) to initiate a review of this new, heavy industrial activity. This significantly delayed the onset of drilling, creating “space” for the movement to build. The Atlantic Chapter was among the many voices calling on then Governor Paterson to institute a moratorium on fracking.
In 2009, the Atlantic Chapter became the first major organization to call for a statewide ban of this highly destructive practice, joining thousands of other activists who believed the process could never be made safe. That same year, the Gas Drilling Task Force was formed to address the Chapter’s concerns about fracking’s harmful effects on the environment, water and air quality, and human and animal health.
Governor Cuomo’s fracking ban represents the culmination of thousands upon thousands of volunteer hours spent by grassroots activists across the state to educate themselves and the public on fracking, solicit scientific studies and legal advice, lobby elected officials, bird-dog politicians, testify at hearings, push for local bans, and organize countless forums, rallies and public events to get the message out.
We owe a huge debt of thanks to all these activists for helping to achieve this milestone, which will likely reverberate in other states and even the world.
Today we should savor this victory. But tomorrow we must press onward to prohibit and dismantle fracking’s big ugly brothers — gas and oil pipelines with their compressor stations, as well as condensate tanks, frack-waste dump sites, LNG export terminals, storage facilities, bomb trains, and water withdrawal and transport projects that have been popping up like cancerous lesions all across New York State.
This truly historic success must now be empowered by further advances. We in New York State, and indeed in the US and around the world, must complete the transition from toxic fossil and nuclear fuels — which threaten our very existence — to a sustainable world based on conservation, efficiency and clean renewable sources of energy.
We must stay on this path, for there’s no other choice and no time to waste.
Atlantic Chapter Gas Drilling Task Force Co-Chairs
Kate Bartholomew
Gusti Bogok
Chris Burger