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Expected lawsuits don't follow NY fracking ban
ALBANY - Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his top commissioners braced for lawsuits when they announced plans to ban large-scale hydraulic fracturing in late 2014.
They weren't alone: Advocates on both sides of the years-long debate over natural-gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale had assumed it would be the courts -- not the governor -- that ultimately decided fracking's fate in the Empire State.
So far, they've been wrong.
As of Thursday, only one lawsuit challenging the fracking ban had been filed in the two years since Cuomo and his top commissioners officially put the ban in place.
And that suit -- filed by East Rochester attorney David Morabito -- was dealt a blow last week when a mid-level appeals court dismissed it, ruling Morabito didn't have proper standing to sue.
The lack of litigation has been a surprise to those who spent years closely following New York's highly contentious fracking debate, including Walter Hang, an Ithaca-based environmentalist who helped organize opposition to fracking in the Southern Tier.
"Absolutely, I thought there was going to be litigation," said Hang, who owns an environmental database firm. "It just never happened."
Heated battle
Major natural-gas companies began targeting areas of the Southern Tier in late 2007, aided by advances in fracking technology that made it possible to tap into tight, underground formations like the Marcellus Shale, which covers a wide swath of upstate.
It set off a heated battle between Southern Tier landowners -- many of whom were reeling from years of economic decline -- and anti-fracking advocates, who warned of the potential for damage to the state's land, water and air.
Cuomo's health and environmental conservation commissioners recommended banning high-volume fracking in December 2014, putting an end to the six-year review process that spanned two governors, countless hearings and raucous protests at the state Capitol and beyond.
The ban was officially put into place the following June.
Since then, the gas industry has declined to challenge New York's ban, instead focusing its drilling efforts in Pennsylvania and other states where fracking is allowed and even welcomed.
Previous efforts by the industry and landowners to fight fracking bans at the local-government level were unsuccessful, with the Court of Appeals -- New York's top court -- ruling against them.
Karen Moreau, executive director of API New York, the state chapter of the major gas-industry trade group, said the litigation route is "fraught with challenges."
"The companies that we represent generally are looking to develop where the states are receptive," Moreau said Thursday. "Many of those companies made business decisions at the time to continue developing elsewhere."
Hang said the lack of a challenge from the gas industry is a testament to the strength of the anti-fracking movement.
"I think that the pressure on the governor to prohibit shale fracking was so intense that the people who would normally take legal action have been deterred because they realize it's just an incredible fight," he said.
Only suit
Morabito, meanwhile, first filed his lawsuit in May 2015.
The attorney, who owns land in Allegany County, argued that the state's fracking ban is "arbitrary and capricious" because various drafts of the state’s extensive review of fracking have concluded it’s a “viable and acceptable” method for capturing natural gas.
But a state Supreme Court judge tossed Morabito's suit last year, claiming he didn't have standing to sue because he hadn't officially applied for a drilling permit.
Last week, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court agreed, unanimously upholding the lower court ruling.
Morabito said Thursday he intends to continue his lawsuit. But he will need help from the Court of Appeals.
Since the Appellate Division ruling was unanimous, he will have to seek the Court of Appeals' permission to appeal to the state's top court. Morabito says he intends to do so, and if that doesn't work, he intends to move on to the federal courts.
Morabito expressed frustration with API, questioning why the trade group didn't latch on to his lawsuit. He is representing himself.
"I was offended that API did not intercede on my behalf," Morabito said. "They have the legal ability, they have the knowledge, they have the capability."
Still, Morabito says he plans to exhaust his legal options.
"The ability to conduct high-volume hydofracking on landowner’s private properties will bring economic prosperity to the residents of upstate New York and create enormous tax revenues for the Empire State," he said.
State lax on cleaning up toxic sites left by ExxonMobil, report claims
ALBANY — Thousands of contaminated sites left by oil giant ExxonMobil and its predecessor companies have not been cleaned up because of lax action by state regulators, a new report claims.
The report from the New York Public Interest Research Group found that more than 3,500 ExxonMobil gas stations around the state and dozens of larger terminal and storage facilities have not been adequately cleaned up because the state has not done enough to press the company to do so.
One of the most notorious sites is the former Standard Oil Company facility along the Newtown Creek in Brooklyn which, dating back to the mid 1800s, has spilled an estimated 30 million gallons of oil into the creek and surrounding soil, according to the report.
“It’s long past time for analysis and talking, it’s time for action,” said NYPIRG’s Blair Horner.
Contaminants from the sites pose major threats to drinking water sources and endanger the health of neighboring communities, the report stated.
“These things have to get cleaned up, they don’t get better over time,” he added.
The report, which used government data compiled by the research firm Toxics Targeting, focused on ExxonMobil because it is one of the biggest oil companies in the world and appeared to have the most contaminated sites in New York but the state needs to get tough with all polluters, Horner said.
A spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation defended the agency and blasted NYPIRG’s report.
"DEC rapidly responds to and cleans up thousands of contaminated sites every year in every corner of the state to ensure that the environment and public health are protected at all times while aggressively pursuing and holding those accountable for the contamination,” said spokesman Sean Mahar. “Our dedicated field staff and first responders will continue their daily response to spills to keep New Yorkers safe and to suggest otherwise or discredit our staff's commitment, is an irresponsible act by a few headline grabbers to shamefully feed New Yorkers with misinformation."
NYPIRG’s Blair Horner said too much time has passed and now "it's time for action."
(NYPIRG/TWITTER)
ExxonMobil, in a statement, also slammed the report as inaccurate.
“Where historical impacts exist as a result of its own or its predecessors' operations, the company works under the oversight of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to address those impacts,” the company said in a statement. “Remediation of legacy sites is a broad issue for the industry and ExxonMobil is an active participant. ExxonMobil takes its environmental responsibility seriously and is committed to meeting its compliance and remediation obligations.”
Horner and Walter Hang of Toxics Targeting said state law requires polluters clean up contaminated sites but often the process gets bogged down in “endless negotiations” and disputes over how to do it and how much it will cost.
“Many of these problems have been known about for decades and they still haven’t been cleaned up,” Hang said.
Hang said another notorious example of contamination is a 315-mile abandoned oil pipeline built by Standard Oil that stretches from Bayonne, N.J., to Olean, N.Y., Oil releases from the abandoned line have been reported in at least a half-dozen different locations.
Environmental activists say thousands of oil spills remain across state
ALBANY — Thousands of petroleum oil spills at storage facilities, pipelines and places like gas stations across the state have not been properly cleaned up, according to documents from the New York Public Interest Research Group and Toxics Targeting.
Walter Hang, who runs Toxic Targeting, said that there are about 3,500 sites linked to Exxon Mobil that had spills that were not cleaned up to state standards. His report was based of records obtained by Freedom of Information Law requests to the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.
“Many of these problems have been known about, literally for decades, and they still haven’t been cleaned up,” he said at a Thursday news conference.
Hang and Blair Horner, NYPIRG’s executive director, said they were neither targeting Exxon nor producing a “comprehensive” list of spills but that the company illustrated the broader issue.
“The story is bigger than just Exxon Mobil,” Horner said. “There’s been a lot of debate in Albany about water quality and water infrastructure, issues about climate change. Clearly this shows that that agenda has to be broadened to look at the impacts that fossil fuels have in other areas as well.”
A spokesperson for Exxon Mobil said the company was reviewing the documents, but did not immediately have a comment.
Hang said negotiations between the state and various parties for many of the spills have been unresolved for years.
“In many cases these are just endless negotiations,” he said. “It’s just dragging on.”
A spokesperson for the DEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hang said the DEC maintains a database of reported spills, but that the documents obtained via public records laws include important data not found in the regular database.
“What we’re hoping for is by making this information available today to the public is drive the kind of remedial effort that will remove the pollution and meet the applicable standards,” he said.
For more information, go to the Politico New York Pro website by clicking here...
Oil spill data across New York released
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – When you’re dealing with petroleum and pipelines, leaks are bound to occur, but environmental firms argue the problem in New York is companies aren’t cleaning them up and they’re seeing little action from the state government to help.
“A huge array of oil terminal problems, gas station problems, the scale of the pollution is simply staggering, it’s just hard to believe,” Walter Hang, president, Toxics Targeting, said.
What started as looking at one pipeline leak in the Southern Tier lead to a statewide analysis for Walter Hang’s environmental firm in Ithaca.
“Contaminated soil and wetlands and it was never cleaned up to the applicable standards.”
That pipeline is not alone, looking at DEC’s own data, Hang found over 3,500 spills from gas stations alone and another ten from large tank storage facilities.
Hang says the spills have been known about, some for decades, but the clean up’s failed to meet state standards.
“I found sites for example from Rochester, New York almost twenty feet of oil that have never been cleaned up to state standards.”
Hang deals with numbers, not patients, but common sense says oil seeping twenty feet deep underground left untreated for years near suburbs is not good.
“What we’re hoping is that these kinds of issues are addressed that the governor and regulators crack the whip on responsible parties, the responsible parties pay for their cleanup, lawmakers hold hearings, the public gets engaged,” Blair Horner, executive director, New York Public Interest Research Group, said.
This work just happened to look at ExxonMobil, the largest oil company in New York state, but advocates say the main focus should be on the state’s department of conservation.
“The companies are dragging their feet, they’re not cleaning it up, they’re studying everything to death and they’re losing notes.”
Hang points to past statements’ from the DEC saying they’d work with companies to comply with state standards but says their own data prove that’s not happening.
“We’re just not making the kind of progress that’s being required,” Hang said.
Check out all of the toxic sites on this interactive map.
DEC sent the following statement Thursday evening:
"DEC rapidly responds to and cleans up thousands of contaminated sites every year in every corner of the state to ensure that the environment and public health are protected at all times while aggressively pursuing and holding those accountable for the contamination. Our dedicated field staff and first responders will continue their daily response to spills to keep New Yorkers safe and to suggest otherwise or discredit our staff’s commitment, is an irresponsible act by a few headline grabbers to shamefully feed New Yorkers with misinformation."