Reaction to Thursday’s announcement by the Cuomo administration that New York State must review potential public health effects before deciding whether to allow fracking is split along fairly predictable lines.
Gas industry officials and landowners who want to lease their properties for this kind of natural gas drilling said they were disappointed because the move means that fracking won’t start anytime soon in New York. Still, some said they were relieved that the state — and not outside experts, as environmental groups had wanted — will assess the potential for public harm.
Dan Fitzsimmons, president of the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York, which represents around pro-fracking 77,000 property owners, said that delegating the study to others would surely have resulted in longer delays. He therefore called the move “good news.”
All the same, he said that further health studies were unnecessary. “As people who would host this activity on our ...