The Fracking Divide: Who Will Prevail in N.Y.?

Like the blind man and the elephant, the politics of gas drilling depend a lot on where you look.

Michael Forster Rothbart
for The New York TimesJennifer Huntington, a dairy farmer in Middlefield, N.Y., favors gas drilling, but her town has banned it.

A Quinnipiac University pollreleased last week found residents of New York State almost evenly split on drilling, with 44 in favor because of economic benefits and 43 percent opposed because of environmental concerns. That represents a modest trend toward skepticism. In August, the poll found 47 percent to 42 percent in favor.

But polls, some more scientific than others, in many of the areas most likely to see gas drilling tend to show overwhelming opposition of two-thirds or more, particularly to horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a controversial process that injects chemicals and massive amounts of water into shale to free natural gas. (As I noted in an article in Sunday’s Times, the divide has led to ill will, often intimate and intense, in small towns and rural areas.)

Ken Jaffe of Slope Farms in Meredith, N.Y., cited surveys by Pulse Opinion Research showing 72 percent of respondents in Delaware County and 69 percent in Sullivan County opposing fracking in their towns.

“The story is the overwhelming local opposition, and the plan of the governor to ally with the gas companies to act against local voters and their governments, and attempt to eviscerate local land use regulation that is guaranteed by the N.Y. State Constitution,’’ he wrote in an e-mail message.

Anti-fracking forces have become an increasingly potent force upstate. More than 50 local communities have approved or are contemplating bans on fracking. Anti-fracking candidates and slates are proliferating without a countermovement on the other side. And fracking opponents are hoping to raise the stakes as high as possible for Gov. Andrew Cuomo by circulating a petition that says: “I pledge that I will never vote for Andrew Cuomo for any public office, ever, if he tries to force us to exist with hydrofracking in New York.”

But majority rule doesn’t always dictate what people can do with their own land. And the question remains whether that opposition is potent enough for New York to do what no state has done: turn away the gas industry’s favored technology, strip many landowners of their ability to lease their land and ban fracking.

That would probably mean turning New York’s back on its potential share of the Marcellus Shale, a giant gas field that an industry report estimates as worth more than $2 trillion.

Opponents say the long-term cost would exceed the benefits. But with New York State close to completing its final regulations on gas drilling, hearings at four areas around the state in November are sure to show just how high the stakes are for both sides.