The New York Court of Appeals announced last Thursday that it would hear cases challenging municipal bans on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas. The court should uphold these bans in what would be both a substantive and symbolic move, making it clear that hydraulic fracturing is not welcome in New York.

Lower courts have upheld the bans in question in the Upstate New York towns of Middlefield and Dryden. Court officials said that if the cases are handled as usual, they will be argued and decided next spring.

The process of hydraulic fracturing — or fracking — uses millions of gallons of fresh water mixed with chemicals to fracture rock containing natural gas. Concerns about the potential contamination of drinking water and the safe disposal of the chemical-laden water used in the fracking process remain at the forefront of critics’ arguments.

A 5-year-old moratorium on fracking in New York remains in effect as public health officials study its effects.

The debate about hydrofracking in New York has been a contentious one, especially among upstate residents who stand to reap the economic benefits of drilling for natural gas found in the Marcellus shale formation.

In my own town in the Southern Tier region, it’s not uncommon to see next-door neighbors with yard signs expressing both support and opposition toward fracking.

The economic benefits of allowing fracking in New York are clear. It would bring jobs and capital back to an upstate area struggling to find economic relief in the post-industrial era.

Property owners would collect royalties for allowing their land to be drilled and the gas underneath to be harvested. Indeed, many people would become at least moderately wealthy.

These benefits sound too good to be true. Which, as always, means they probably are.

The potential environmental costs that come with fracking outweigh the economic benefits associated with it.

There are lingering questions among environmental activists about the safety of the drinking water surrounding fracking sites. There is a potential risk in the fracking process for water containing carcinogens like mercury, methanol and formaldehyde to contaminate drinking water.

Moreover, fracking consumes an immense amount of fresh water. Millions of gallons are required to frack each well, and each well can be fracked dozens of times. That’s a lot of chemically contaminated water of which to dispose.

Regardless of potential health risks – contaminated drinking water and other concerns – the fact that natural gas is a fossil fuel remains at the center of why fracking should be banned in New York.

Recent marketing campaigns have presented natural gas as an “alternative” source of energy to oil, but even so, we’re still feeding our fossil fuel addiction by drilling for it and consuming it.

It’s laughable that natural gas is being presented as alternative energy – an alternative to what, though?

Natural gas won’t solve the eventual problem of oil and gas wells drying up — it’ll just delay the inevitable. The issue of man-made climate change won’t magically disappear if there’s a widespread switch to natural gas.

We need a real green revolution in the United States — a paradigm shift that results in “alternative energy” being defined as wind, solar and water, not as a different kind of fossil fuel.

Globally, we face real challenges. The planet is getting hotter and oil and gas wells are going to dry up some day. Natural gas isn’t the solution, and our resources would be better spent researching and investing in truly renewable energy sources.

Here’s hoping the New York Court of Appeals nudges us in the right direction by upholding municipal fracking bans this coming spring.

David Swenton is a senior political science and writing and rhetoric major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at daswento@syr.edu or followed on Twitter at @DavidSwenton.

Published on September 4, 2013 at 2:08 am