Lie-perpetuating Freedom-Haters might like the fracking ban, but
normal people are getting squeezed by it:
Environmentalists may be cheering the news that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has decided to ban hydraulic fracturing, but farmers and small businesses across the state are reeling.
“If we had been able to get some gas drilling going it would have made our lives a little easier and taken a few of the stresses away,” echoed Judi Whittaker, who owns a dairy farm and hoped for gas royalties to help pay her high property taxes. “We’ll just have to rethink what we’re doing and move ahead. Agriculture has ups and downs all the time. You just have to go along for the ride.”
The Marcellus shale formation covers New York’s Southern Tier, which is covered by small towns and farms that would have benefited from royalties paid out by natural gas drillers. High taxes and restrictive land use laws have made it tough for Upstate farmers to eke out a living, however, and many family farms are on the chopping block now that fracking is indefinitely banned.
It's said that states can act as policy laboratories, so that we can examine what works, what doesn't and why. Memo to the other 49: This kind of planned decline shutters farms and small businesses and drives people out.
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