| When I started blogging about Dryden, I didn't expect we'd become the epicenter of a state and sometimes national controversy about gas drilling.
Yesterday, though, came word that the gas companies picked Dryden as their target. They haven't actually filed it yet, so I'm guessing they bravely led with a press release, but apparently a gas company is stepping up to sue over Dryden's ban on gas drilling:
Anschutz Exploration Corp. plans to file a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Tompkins County to have the ban struck down in the Town of Dryden, according to the company's Albany-based attorney Thomas West. He said the lawsuit is expected to be filed this week...
"It will be a good opportunity to let the courts decide whether municipalities can, under the guise of zoning or otherwise, ban or regulate drilling," West said. "Hopefully, it won't be a difficult issue for the court."
I'm surprised they didn't wait until after the elections, but pouring fuel on the fire is after all what they're about. I'll be curious to see the actual filings, and will try to post them here.
I wouldn't expect early rulings in this case to settle anything, either - this will likely be settled by New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, unless something like the proposal from Senator Seward or the one from Senator Ball intercedes on the side of the Town.
While I suspected that the gas companies would eventually sue to try to overturn Dryden's drilling ban through a zoning clarification, I'd also thought such jousting would wait until after the DEC finished the review of the sGEIS, came up with regulations, and actually began issuing permits. Instead, they announced a lawsuit yesterday.
Dryden, however, seemed like a plausible target for the gas companies from the beginning:
Dryden is at an interesting geological location, with Trenton Black River, Marcellus Shale, and Utica Shale drilling all possible though not necessarily ideal. They have a local surrogate happy to handle their public relations and cheer on the lawsuit. Unlike Middlefield, we don't have the Baseball Hall of Fame to make it a potentially national issue. The Town, though trending more and more Democratic, is still definitely a place where elections can shift policy drastically. Lawsuits can certainly be election issues.
In particular, Anschutz has had an application in for a Trenton Black River well for a while, sometimes called the Cook Well. It was poorly written and poorly handled by the DEC, leading to a complaint by the Town. It's basically sat on hold through the DEC Marcellus process - though Anschutz claimed at the time that they "weren't sure that well would even be drilled", those delays are oddly coincidental with the Marcellus process.
I wouldn't have thought - though I am not a lawyer - that they would actually have legal standing to sue before the DEC actually issued them a permit. Perhaps they can do it in advance, but we'll see. It's not clear to me how they've actually been damaged at this point, but I suspect they'll use the prior Trenton Black River portion of the application to claim that they're an innocent victim of the charge against hydrofracking.
If they do have standing, I'm guessing this is largely a "might as well sue before other towns get the idea this is a good thing." Whether or not they have standing, announcing the lawsuit just as election time is gearing up seems like they hope the legal process will influence the election process.
It may well do that - just not necessarily in the direction they hoped.
[Cross-posted/combined from here and here.] |
