Why fracking has Cuomo at a loss
Cuomo, enjoying the outdoors. Reid Pillifant
8:26 am Feb. 13, 20138
Andrew Cuomo has a problem that can't be solved by any amount of legislative horse-trading, or any number of cajoling phone calls.
Upstate business interests, and many residents, want the governor to open parts of New York State to hydraulic fracturing, in order to generate revenue and jobs in the economically moribund region.
But environmental activists want the opposite, and have threatened to brand Cuomo a traitor and a sellout, and to forever dog his future ambitions, if Cuomo allows any drilling at all.
At some point, maybe soon, Cuomo will make a decision about whether to allow fracking under certain circumstances or to ban it indefinitely. But while he and his administration can delay a final decision, as they did again on Tuesday, he can't really finesse it.
On fracking, there is no Cuomoesque middle ground.
"NOT ONE WELL," read a full-page ad in the Des Moines Register on Tuesday morning, in an unsubtle nod to Cuomo's undeclared plans for 2016.
"Governor Cuomo, America is looking to you," said the ad, which was sponsored by a consortium of environmental groups including Greenpeace. "Don't allow a single fracked shale gas well in New York. This is your chance to be a national leader on climate. Your choice now will be remembered forever."
The predicament has given the governor pause, with the administration missing a series of deadlines in the name of ever more studies of the potential impact of drilling. On Tuesday, the state health commissioner, Nirav Shah, said in a letter that the state's health review will "require additional time to complete," meaning the state will not meet a February deadline.
The issue defies the usual political methods of Cuomo, who has been lauded by pundits, and rewarded in the polls by the public, for his ability to negotiate compromises among competing interests in Albany.
His budgets have been unfailingly on time, with the support of upstate Republicans and the certification of pro-labor Democrats. He shepherded a same-sex marriage bill through a skeptical Republican Senate. He negotiated a raise in tax rates that could also be sold as a tax cut, to the satisfaction of all sides.
Last month, he brokered the nation's first gun control bill since the tragedy in Newtown, to cheers from liberals across the country, while adding enough tough penalties and mental health restrictions to attract significant Republican support, and allow them to claim some ownership of the legislation, too.
That bill has inspired angry and vocal opposition from some gun owners, but Cuomo has dismissed the opposition as outliers, and polls show a majority of New Yorkers support the new laws.
On fracking, there's no such consensus. The public is evenly split on the issue, with 40 percent in favor, and 40 percent opposed, according to a Siena poll last week.
And even though there's some constituency that would support a compromise position—like, say, a ban fracking in the environmentally sensitive watershed and approval of a small number of projects elsewhere to proceed on a trial basis—there's a significant number of voters who wouldn't see it that way.
Among opponents of fracking, whose number includes celebrities like Yoko Ono and the actor Mark Ruffalo, 54 percent saying they'd be "very upset" if the governor allowed any drilling at all.
"You can't have both, don't you see?" yelled Ruffalo, at a protest at the Capitol last week. "You can't say that we have Sandy, we have climate change and we have to fight it, and then in the next breath say we're going to move forward with hydrofracking in New York State. It's called cognitive dissonance, those two ideas don't go well together."
Ruffalo said drilling would make Cuomo a "shill" for the industry and encouraged Cuomo to make the state a leader in renewable energy instead.
"If you do that, with our help, we'll help you get there, we'll help you be president," Ruffalo added. "But we'll cream you if you open New York State to fracking."
Proponents of fracking are less unified. Only 20 percent say they would be very upset at a prohibition on drilling, and 39 percent say they would be "somewhat upset."
For Cuomo, the danger of a total ban isn't so much in the drop in overall public support--his approval rating hovers near 70 percent, even after a slight drop recently, and he's on track to win re-election by a massive majority.
But it could have an effect on the idea that the governor is doing everything within his power to jumpstart the state's economy and communicate to national industries that New York is "open for business," even as the state's unemployment rate lags behind the national average. More seriously, it could set up a real upstate-downstate divide in Cuomo's approval numbers for the first time, which ruins his ability to run for president, like George W. Bush successfully did 13 years ago, as a governor who managed to work effectively with everyone.
In upstate New York, "fracking could be the difference between economic life and death," wrote Allysia Stanley, an associate editor for the Wall Street Journal's online opinion page on Tuesday, expressing what is not at all a marginal opinion in the depressed regions hoping to cash in on the gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale.
"Cuomo loses his mojo," read the headline on Monday's column from New York Post state editor Fred Dicker, who has begun giving Cuomo the treatment that was so long reserved for the governor's less fortunate opponents.
"The New York/Pennsylvania border is like the old Berlin Wall, with Pennsylvania being free West Berlin, with prosperity and good jobs thanks to gas drilling,’’ said someone Dicker called a "a top New York business official."
Cuomo's commissioner of environmental conservation said the state could issue fracking permits quickly once the state had finished studying its potential health impacts. It'll be at least a few more weeks.
It is just not true that gas drilling will be an economic windfall for upstate New York. I live in the Southern Tier, where fracking is supposedly 'wanted'. As we are close to the Pennsylvania border, we can see with our own eyes what gas drilling has done to the counties where there is drilling. Far from economic heaven, we see deserted towns and neighborhoods, ruined housing due to water contamination, unhappy residents and, gasp, no signs of economic prosperity. I hope Governor Cuomo is not believing the gas industry myths that drilling will bring what New York needs. Some very large landowners may stand to profit, but the real costs will be to the rest of us.
I live in the Southern Tier of NY. I think this article may give some readers the misleading impression that upstate NY is in favor of fracking. If you look at the Siena Poll results, you will see that upstate NY (including the Southern Tier) is just about evenly split on the issue--the same as the rest of NY. The difference between upstate and downstate on this issue is that fewer upstate NY residents are undecided.
Many of us in upstate NY realize that the economic benefits of fracking would go to a small minority of people in the region, while ALL of us would have to deal with the damage and dangers of fracking.
If "WATSON" was our Governor and this would all have been decided,
Run "WATSON" run
Andrew "Cesare" Cuomo cannot make a decision he is fallen and can't get UP to make the tough decisions.
We need leadership and Andrew "Cesare" Cuomo is no longer a "LEADER"
We need FRACKING and all the good jobs it will provide
Be Happy with Fracking
Before there was the "Oracle of Delphi" there was Count Vampire J. Machiavelli
VJ Machiavelli
www.VJMachiavelli.blogspot.com
To The Moon, Mars, and Beyond
Opening the Southern Tier to the industrialization of fracking would be the economic kiss of death, not a boon. It would interfere with our agricultural and tourism sectors, two areas which the governor has pledged to promote upstate. I live in Broome County, whose major economic sectors are hi-tech, medical, and education, including Binghamton University. The University is in the process of implementing a SUNY 2020 initiative, which is building a new Smart Energy Center, to add to the existing Solar Lab, and adding a thousand more students, plus more faculty and staff. It is expected to add over 800 jobs to our area and may leverage more in public-private partnerships. Industrializing the area with drilling and filling it with traffic, noise, and air pollution will make it hard to attract and retain residents. Many in my area oppose drilling and want to bring sustainable jobs, including those in renewable energy, here instead. We have seen the boom-bust and social disruption that drilling has caused in the much less densely populated PA counties on our border and don't want that to happen here in NY.
You state Governor Cuomo is between a rock and a hard place in having to choose between the economic health of the upstate area and its environmental health (including the health of upstate residents.) That's not true. New York can be open for business very easily--focus on renewable energy, education, medicine (we need more doctors, therefore more medical schools,) and all the other businesses, small and large, that will prosper in the next decade or two. Focusing on an industry that of necessity pollutes and has a boom-and-bust cycle is not only dangerous to the environment but shortsighted when it comes to our state economy.
" Today, no area holds more promise than our investments in American energy. After years of talking about it, we're finally poised to control our own energy future. We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years. We have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas and the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar, with tens of thousands of good, American jobs to show for it. We produce more natural gas than ever before, and nearly everyone's energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen.
. . . . the natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. We need to encourage that. That's why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.
That's got to be part of an all-of-the-above plan. But I also want to work with this Congress to encourage the research and technology that helps natural gas burn even cleaner and protects our air and our water."
President Obama, 12 Feb 2013.
Governor Cuomo: your own 2009 New York State Energy Plan recognizes the potential benefit to New York by development of the Marcellus Shale natural gas resource: Production and use of in-state energy resources -- renewable resources and natural gas - - can increase the reliability and security of our energy systems, reduce energy costs, and contribute to meeting climate change, public health and environmental objectives Additionally, by focusing energy investments on in-state opportunities, New York can reduce the amount of dollars "exported" out of the State to pay for energy resources.
Many people in Broome County support natural gas development, we just don't bring "celebrities" and folks from out of state to clog up the streets in Albany. We do vote. We are watching. The President is pretty clear about calling for an end to red tape and speeding up new permits. Why not show us some leadership, agree with the President, and make a decision?
" Today, no area holds more promise than our investments in American energy. After years of talking about it, we're finally poised to control our own energy future. We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years. We have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas and the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar, with tens of thousands of good, American jobs to show for it. We produce more natural gas than ever before, and nearly everyone's energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen.
. . . . the natural gas boom has led to cleaner power and greater energy independence. We need to encourage that. That's why my administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits.
That's got to be part of an all-of-the-above plan. But I also want to work with this Congress to encourage the research and technology that helps natural gas burn even cleaner and protects our air and our water."
President Obama, 12 Feb 2013.
Governor Cuomo: your own 2009 New York State Energy Plan recognizes the potential benefit to New York by development of the Marcellus Shale natural gas resource: Production and use of in-state energy resources -- renewable resources and natural gas - - can increase the reliability and security of our energy systems, reduce energy costs, and contribute to meeting climate change, public health and environmental objectives Additionally, by focusing energy investments on in-state opportunities, New York can reduce the amount of dollars "exported" out of the State to pay for energy resources.
Many people in Broome County support natural gas development, we just don't bring "celebrities" and folks from out of state to clog up the streets in Albany. We do vote. We are watching. The President is pretty clear about calling for an end to red tape and speeding up new permits. Why not show us some leadership, agree with the President, and make a decision?
I live in one of these supposedly "deserted" towns in PA - Towanda, which sits in the middle of the drilling activity in Bradford County. I get tired of reading the argument that economic development is a myth. I've watched the opening of 3 new locally owned motels in our town, the restaurants and stores are full, auto dealers are thriving, construction and trucking companies are booming, landlords have no vacancies and are enjoying increased rents. Anyone who wants a job in our area has one and we've also seen substantial revenue benefits to the school districts, the local farmers, taxpayers and small business. Anyone who owns even a small piece of real estate has seen a big increase in value. And we all enjoy the benefit of low priced natural gas everytime we use electricity generated in cleaner burning gas-fired power plants. To say that only "large landowners" will benefit is disingenuous.
If Govenor Cuomo really wants to make a statement, maybe he should ban the use of all fossil fuels in the state for 4 years and see how many short-sighted environmentalists are left - eating their apples and their yogurt in the dark, in houses with no heat or air conditioning, unable to flee because their cars are out of gas. The future is not here yet. Energy is not clean. And this is the ideal transition fuel in the meantime.