In his State of the Union Address last week, President Obama sent a sharp memo to Gov. Cuomo: Quit the dithering and start moving ahead with natural-gas exploration.
Here’s hoping Cuomo — and Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joe Martens — were paying attention.
“We have a supply of natural gas that can last nearly 100 years,” Obama said Tuesday. “And my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy.”
With good reason: “The development of natural gas will create jobs” — 600,000 over the next decade, he said — “and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper.”
No, the president didn’t explicitly utter the words “hydraulic fracturing,” or “fracking” — the process in which natural gas is extracted from rock using high-pressure water and chemicals. Nor did he mention Cuomo by name.
But he did state flatly that “we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy” — as fracking opponents in New York have been trying to claim.
True, the president did insist that “all companies that drill for natural gas on public lands [must] disclose the chemicals they use.” But that’s hardly so onerous a requirement that work can’t proceed soon. Indeed, the natural-gas industry itself hasn’t objected to that.
On the other hand, his bottom-line message was clear: Fracking can be done safely — and America’s energy and economic needs require aggressive drilling for natural gas. Now.
Likewise, there’s no mistaking just who needs to hear that message: After all, pretty much every state with natural-gas deposits is already on board — except New York.
Indeed, the economic boom from fracking in Pennsylvania is already so robust that the mere spillover is bolstering nearby parts of this state.
Alas, Albany has been engaged in a vetting process that’s dragging on forever.
That may be precisely what fracking foes have in mind: With enough delays, and unworkable regulations, New Yorkers may never see this new industry in their state. If so, New Yorkers will feel the pinch, missing out on an enormous opportunity that’s already benefiting everyone else.
Frankly, there’s no cause for more delay: The Department of Environmental Conservation determined last summer that fracking can be done safely, and is merely considering how best to move forward. But Cuomo has never explicitly given his go-ahead.
This month, in fact, he left fracking-regulation funds out of his budget.
“You would not be hiring staff to regulate hydro-fracking unless you believed you were going ahead with hydro-fracking,” he said. “We haven’t made that determination.”
Any decision to proceed will be made “down the road.”
Not anytime soon, in other words.
Meanwhile, the Green Lobby and its legislative allies are pushing home-rule legislation that would allow localities to overrule any state approval of fracking.
Cuomo can’t let that happen — or his own support for the industry will be meaningless.
What’s needed instead is legislation that does precisely the opposite — prohibit towns and counties from bypassing Albany.
But the clock is ticking.
It’s time for Cuomo and Martens to move forward, as the president suggested, and let companies start their work — developing cleaner energy, producing new jobs and boosting New York’s economy.