New York court upholds US towns’ right to ban fracking within borders

New York state’s top court has ruled that US towns have the authority to ban gas drilling within their borders, giving a boost to opponents of the drilling method known as fracking.

Drilling company Norse Energy USA and an upstate dairy farmer separately sued the towns, claiming the bans violated a law designed to create uniform statewide regulations on the oil and gas industry. The court disagreed, saying the law was designed to bar only local ordinances that could impede the state’s ability to regulate drilling activities. The Court of Appeals in a 5-2 decision upheld drilling bans in Dryden and in Middlefield saying the laws were extensions of the towns’ zoning authority.

“Plainly, the zoning laws in these cases are directed at regulating land use generally and do not attempt to govern the details, procedures or operations of the oil and gas industries,” Judge Victoria Graffeo wrote. The decision affirmed rulings by three lower courts.