New Yorkers hoping one day to enjoy the promising financial rewards of fracking might not know whether to laugh or cry over a bill bouncing around the Legislature.
“CJ’s Law” — named for CJ Bevins, a 23-year-old worker who died in a 2011 drilling-site accident — would set up a mountain of rules ostensibly meant to ensure safety at such sites. But it would also require drillers to use only unionized employees.
“All applicants for a new drilling permit for an oil and gas drilling operation shall utilize union laborers,” says Section 928 of Senate bill S3466. The only exception: workers who complete a Department of Labor-approved training course.
The bill’s emergence might be a sign that critics of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, expect Gov. Cuomo soon to give a long-delayed green light to the process. (After all, its Senate sponsor, Tony Avella of Queens, is an ardent fracking foe.) If so, New Yorkers — especially Upstaters desperate for an economic jolt — may be tempted to rejoice.
But then, S3466’s requirements could prove so onerous that any financial benefits from fracking instantly vaporize. Gas-drilling companies may just shun New York altogether. (Some already have.)
That would be too bad, because the rules seem unnecessary. Gas and oil companies, after all, are proud of their safety record — despite the Bevins tragedy (all jobs come with risk, they note). They’ve operated wells in New York safely for decades without any of the new regs.
New Yorkers might also wonder why lawmakers would stick their noses into private-sector labor-management issues by mandating union workers — if not to drive up costs and make the process less viable.
That would seem to fit with predictions that Cuomo will OK fracking, to avoid being labeled anti-jobs — but then impose rules that make it uneconomical.
Areas where fracking is legal, for instance, might be severely limited. Towns may impose their own bans. Should drillers still try to make a buck here, they’d face steep costs from rules like those in S3466.
Meanwhile, Cuomo’s delays have allowed time for the critics to gin up opposition: In a poll Thursday, voters, by more than a 3-1 margin, said fracking would hurt the environment. That could be an excuse for Cuomo never to bless fracking in New York.
Foes would love that. But in case he OK’s it anyway, they’d still have a Plan B: S3466.