Cuomo Administration Officials: ‘Don’t Frack With NY’
[ http://www.alternet.org/cuomo-administr ... 028870&t=5 ]
By Cliff Weathers December 17, 2014
New York environmental and health commissioners move to ban hydraulic fracturing in the Empire State.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration has tentatively said no to the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the state based on the recommendations of two commissioners who have studied the energy extraction process.
Cuomo met with his top advisers and representatives of the media late this morning, and announced that because fracking is a highly technical field, he required more information and less emotion in his decision-making. So he deferred his decision on fracking to the findings of Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Joseph Martens and acting state health commissioner Howard Zucker.
“This has been the most emotionally charged issue that I’ve ever experienced. More than marriage equality, more than the gun issue, more than the death penalty,” said Cuomo. “But I will be bound by what the experts say,” he said, before turning over the meeting to his commissioners. “Let the science decide.”
Martens and Zucker, who both spoke at length at the meeting, concurred that the risks to the water supply and air quality were too great to approve fracking. Dr. Zucker said that he reviewed the peer-reviewed studies, and that there was both scientific and anecdotal evidence of immediate health and environmental risks. He also said there were virtually no long-term health studies to help him make his decision and that more research is needed.
“The bottom line is that we lack the comprehensive long-term studies,” Zucker said. “The science isn’t there.”
Current studies he’s reviewed gives him reason to pause. “We have a responsibility to ourselves, but also future generations,” Zucker said.
Zucker said the “cumulative concerns” about fracking “give me reason to pause.” He also said that he would not let his family live in an area where hydraulic fracturing was taking place.
Martens said he would will use Zucker’s findings in writing the DEC’s final report on the issue, which he said would restrict fracking in New York.
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