It’s time for New York to commit unequivocally to getting this groundbreaking natural-gas-extraction process under way.
Recent decisions by the US Environmental Protection Agency should send a clear message to Gov. Cuomo and Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens:
No more fracking procrastination.
It’s time for New York to commit unequivocally to getting this groundbreaking natural-gas-extraction process under way.
As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, the EPA’s notoriously heavy regulators seem to be backing off.
In three different recent instances — in Texas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — the EPA has retreated in the direction of accepting local studies that attest to fracking’s safety.
This suggests that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was serious during a New Jersey energy conference earlier this year.
“I think that fracking as a technology is perfectly capable of being clean. I do,” she told attendees, adding that fracking could produce “a huge return on the investment.”
That was pretty much in line with President Obama’s comments just weeks before in his State of the Union address, in which he celebrated fracking’s benefits — including job creation.
So, the president spoke; Administrator Jackson heard; the message now seems to be trickling down to agency regulators.
So there is absolutely no reason why the same thing can’t happen here.
Albany has been “studying” the process — some would say applying the Death by a Thousand Cuts — for years.
Enough.
Gov. Cuomo needs to deliver the message to Martens — who can then send word down his own chain.
Get cracking on fracking.
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