After years of gauging the environmental, medical, economic and political risks of hydraulic fracturing, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is moving to ban this method of extracting natural gas from shale deposits in New York State.
[Update, 9:30 p.m. | See the end of the post for an excerpt from the state health study that underpinned the decision.]
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The natural gas news is nicely summarized by The New York Times and Associated Press. The A.P. story had this excellent section laying out how the decision was unveiled, with the prime factors being “red flag” issues described by the state health commissioner, Howard Zucker, and scant signs of an economic benefit described by Joe Martens, the environmental conservation commissioner:...