No Fracking Way: An Empirical Look at Why New York Towns Banned Shale Development

Abstract

Across the United States, local governments and states have adopted measures to restrict shale development that uses high-volume hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling (collectively, fracking) within their borders, hindering a national energy policy that relies on continued access to natural gas trapped within shale formations. This Article takes an empirical look at what might motivate these local anti-fracking measures by analyzing the behavior of New York towns from 2010 through the end of 2013. Before New York’s highest court recognized a town’s authority to ban fracking and before the state officially banned fracking, more than a hundred shale-rich New York towns adopted bans or moratoria on fracking. The results show that towns most likely to adopt bans were those with residents that were more vulnerable to potential water contamination and those with little history of prior oil-and-gas development. Moratoria adoption, in contrast, was largely associated with residents’ environmental preferences. The results suggest that, at least when deciding to ban fracking, towns weigh the local costs and benefits of the practice, relying on their knowledge of local conditions and vulnerabilities. The results, then, lay the groundwork for state and federal efforts to reduce local opposition by facilitating responsible shale development, with provisions for taking into account local knowledge and incentives for optimal activity levels, acceptable risk-taking, and comprehensive remediation.