New York state regulators put the finishing touches Monday on the state’s highly controversial ban on hydraulic fracturing.
The administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) filed its 43-page findings statement for the ban Monday, saying fracking is too harmful to the environment and public health to be allowed.
{mosads}“After years of exhaustive research and examination of the science and facts, prohibiting high-volume hydraulic fracturing is the only reasonable alternative,” Joe Martens, head of the Department of Environmental Conservation, said in a statement.
“High-volume hydraulic fracturing poses significant adverse impacts to land, air, water, natural resources and potential significant public health impacts that cannot be adequately mitigated.”
Cuomo approved the ban in December, seven years after the state first put a moratorium on the practice.
The natural gas industry has long pressured New York to allow fracking, since it sits atop the gas-rich Marcellus Shale that has turned neighboring Pennsylvania into the second-largest gas producer in the country.
But Cuomo didn’t budge, even after a report earlier this month from the federal Environmental Protection Agency failed to find “widespread, systemic” harm to drinking water from fracking.
New York is the only state with significant gas resources to ban fracking.