ALBANY, N.Y. (Times Union) — A federal lawsuit filed by a father and son who own more than 160 acres of property in Delaware County is seeking to overturn New York’s ban on the extraction of natural gas through fracking.
The litigation, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Albany in April, is unfolding as Republican gubernatorial candidate and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman has said he would support overturning the state’s fracking prohibitions. The lawsuit’s defendants include Gov. Kathy Hochul, state Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Amanda Lefton and state Attorney General Letitia James.
Last week, several New York-based environmental groups that had advocated for the hydraulic fracking ban filed a joint motion seeking to intervene in the case.
There have been various prohibitions on fracking enacted in the past 18 years. The technology uses high pressure to inject water, sand and chemicals into bedrock to release trapped natural gas or oil. In 2008, the state Department of Environmental Conservation placed a de facto moratorium on high-volume hydraulic fracturing to study its environmental impacts.
In December 2014, roughly six weeks into his second term, then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo cited a state Health Department study that found “significant public health risks” associated with fracking, prompting his administration to issue an order banning use of the technology. The DEC solidified the ban the following year with a statement of findings raising additional concerns about the technology. The ban was codified into law in 2020.
New York also has a de facto moratorium on gelled-propane fracturing, and in 2024, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation barring an experimental form of fracking that uses carbon dioxide.
Environmental groups support the bans, arguing that fracking impacts the local environment and that natural gas production works against the state’s decarbonization goals. But more than 80% of the natural gas that New York imports from other states, including Pennsylvania and West Virginia, is produced by high-volume hydraulic fracturing.
Blakeman said he would seek to overturn the ban, calling it “absolutely insane,” at a campaign rally in the Southern Tier.
“It is clean energy, it is cheap energy,” he said. “We all know from high school economics, supply and demand … we know demand is going to be high and it’s going to be higher with data centers coming into our state, and green energy is not going to fix that problem.”
The federal lawsuit challenging the ban was filed by Thomas Woodward and his son Madison Woodward III, two Delaware County residents who purchased 164 acres of property and its mineral rights in 2011 with the intent of leasing the property for fracking. They sold the property in 2019 but have retained the mineral rights.
The lawsuit argues that the “mineral estate has one function: extraction of the natural gas beneath it. … By prohibiting every commercially viable method of extraction, New York forces the Woodwards to leave their mineral estate economically idle without any form of compensation. This amounts to a total taking of private property that violates the Fifth Amendment.”
The Fifth Amendment bars the taking of “property, without due process of law.”
The attorney general’s office filed a motion last week asking a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing the statute of limitations for any claim by the Woodwards expired in 2018, three years after an administrative ban was put in place by Cuomo’s administration. The attorney general’s office also asserts there is no potential for ongoing harm, which is a prerequisite for overturning a law.
Michael W. Macomber, a partner and CEO at Tully Rinckey, an Albany-based law firm not involved in the case, said that because the lawsuit was filed in federal court and not the state Court of Claims, it allows the plaintiffs only to seek injunctive relief — which would be the overturning of the bans. If the plaintiffs had filed a lawsuit in the state Court of Claims, it would have allowed them to pursue monetary compensation from the state, he added.
