Friday, December 16, 2011 at 11:33AM No Fracking Here
The Town Board on December 13 moved on three fronts to prohibit the natural-gas extraction method known as hydrofracking in Woodstock, accepting an advisory commission’s proposal to amend the zoning law, adopting a councilman’s related measure, and asserting the primacy of municipal home rule in land-use decision making.
Hydraulic fracturing — a horizontal drilling technique known colloquially as hydrofracking, or fracking — entails the high-pressure injection of large volumes of water, sand, and chemicals in order to release natural gas from rock formations deep underground. One such formation, the Marcellus Shale, stretches from Ohio and West Virginia to Pennsylvania and New York.
The technique’s use has prompted widespread concern about potentially adverse environmental effects, including the contamination of drinking water. The state Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) is nearing a decision on the conditions under which hydrofracking might be permitted in New York.
After five residents expressed opposition to fracking and Ulster County legislator Don Gregorius encouraged the Town Board to formalize its position, the board unanimously accepted proposed zoning law amendments, in the form of a new local law, crafted by the Woodstock Environmental Commission (WEC). Through a series of explicitly prohibited uses the local law would effectively ban exploration for, and extraction of, natural gas or petroleum within the town’s borders.
The WEC draft explains the intent of the proposed law as “to take proactive steps to protect and preserve the Town’s rural residential and agricultural character, the quality of the Town’s air and water and scenic and other natural resources, and other assets, [and] to encourage the tourism industry…” Allowing one or more of the prohibited uses, said the draft, “would impair the existing character of the Town.”
The WEC’s chair, David Gross, presented the draft to the board, accompanied by commission members Ann Brandt and Bill Dubilier. The council’s unanimous acceptance of the document is merely the first step toward its adoption as a local law. Remaining steps include a review of the measure by the Planning Board, which may take up to 45 days to submit a response; a SEQRA (State Environmental Quality Review Act) assessment; circulation of the proposal to the county planning board and other agencies; a public hearing; and a final vote by the Town Board.
At the end of the three-and-a-half-hour meeting the board unanimously adopted a resolution, prepared by councilman Jay Wenk, to ban the use in Woodstock of any materials derived from hydrofracking. The resolution specifically cites chemical residue contained in the wastewater product called brine, which, according to Wenk, is approved by the DEC and the state Department of Transportation for de-icing and other uses on New York roadways. Wenk’s measure, which complements the WEC draft law, will be distributed to a variety of state and local officials.
In a third action against fracking, Woodstock agreed to join the Ithaca-area town of Ulysses in signing an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief in support of two other towns in the state, Middlefield and Dryden, which revised their zoning laws in order to prohibit heavy industrial uses including hydrofracking. Those towns are appealing a court decision that reversed the zoning revisions.
At issue in the amicus brief, said the Ulysses supervisor, Roxanne Marino, in a letter to colleagues around the state, is not a town’s support for, or opposition to, natural gas drilling, but the principle of municipal home rule. “[T]he brief is about a municipality’s right to decide for itself, now or in the future, whether gas drilling is an appropriate land use for its citizens,” wrote Marino. “My Town strongly believes that such a local decision should not be made by a private company or by the NYSDEC. Instead, the people who live in the Town should decide for themselves what is best for their future, at any given moment.”
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