New York’s long-running fight over fracking is heading back into the spotlight, and this time Catskills environmental groups want a seat at the defense table.
Three New York environmental organizations filed papers this week asking a federal judge to let them join the state in defending its ban on high-volume hydraulic fracturing. The move responds to an April lawsuit from mineral-rights owners who say the state’s prohibitions have left their property economically idle and therefore amount to an unconstitutional taking. The intervention request sets up a courtroom clash that could determine whether New York’s fracking bans can survive a federal takings challenge.
Groups ask to join the case
Food & Water Watch, Catskill Mountainkeeper and the Delaware Riverkeeper Network filed a joint motion to intervene on June 24 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, arguing they should be allowed to defend the bans and the evidence that led to them, according to Earthjustice. The groups say they helped organize the campaign that pushed regulators to prohibit high-volume fracking and that their members would be harmed if the prohibitions were thrown out. Their filing also notes that state lawyers have already asked the court to dismiss the landowners’ challenge.
Who filed suit and what they say
In April, father and son Thomas Woodward and Madison Woodward III sued state officials, saying New York’s bans on modern fracking methods amount to an uncompensated taking of their mineral rights, according to News10. The Woodwards say they retained mineral rights in Delaware County and that those rights have been rendered economically idle by successive prohibitions on high-volume drilling.
Coverage of the complaint notes the plaintiffs’ contention that modern horizontal wells can require millions of gallons of water, a detail used to underscore the scale of the extraction they argue has been blocked. As reported by News10, the complaint cites those large water-use figures to support the Woodwards’ economic claims.
How New York got here
New York’s prohibition traces back to a 2014 public-health review in which the New York State Department of Health concluded there were still “significant uncertainties” about the public-health effects of high-volume hydraulic fracturing and recommended not permitting the practice, according to the Department of Health. The state Department of Environmental Conservation followed with a Final Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement in 2015 that outlined air, water and community risks tied to high-volume hydraulic fracturing and guided the agency’s regulatory approach. Those administrative steps have been the backbone of the state’s long-standing restrictions on large-scale fracking.
Why activists say the stakes are high
Environmental groups say this is not just a paperwork fight about property law. For them, it is about public health and drinking water as much as private mineral rights. They warn that spills, contaminated wastewater and fugitive methane could threaten reservoirs in the Catskill-Delaware watershed, which supplies roughly 90 percent of New York City’s water on a typical day, according to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Coverage of the intervenors’ filings says the groups plan to press scientific evidence and on-the-ground accounts in court to argue that the bans protect both community health and the region’s drinking water supplies.
Legal stakes and what comes next
The legal battle centers on the Fifth Amendment and whether state regulators’ long-standing prohibitions amount to a taking that requires compensation. The complaint asks the court to declare the bans unconstitutional and to grant relief and compensation, according to Pacific Legal Foundation. In their motion to intervene, the environmental organizations say they have a substantial interest in defending the prohibitions and submitted a proposed motion to dismiss the complaint, according to Earthjustice.
A judge will first decide whether to let the groups into the case. If intervention is granted, the litigation is expected to move forward through briefs and motions that could determine whether New York’s fracking bans hold up under federal review.
However it comes out, the decision will ripple through upstate communities where drilling was once contemplated, and into national debates over how far states can go in regulating energy development and protecting public health. Lawyers on both sides say the case could set precedent that other states and landowners will be watching closely.
