Just days after taking over as mayor of Binghamton, Rich David has dropped the city’s appeal of a court decision striking down the moratorium on oil and gas drilling in Binghamton. The move ends the outgoing Democratic administration’s efforts to block hydraulic fracturing. The city officially withdrew its legal appeal on January 10th, just ten days after David became mayor. Currently, hydrofracking is not allowed in New York, as the state has been considering whether to permit the drilling since 2008. A number of other states have already allowed it, including Pennsylvania. Binghamton had originally enacted a two-year drilling ban in December of 2011, but a group of landowners filed a lawsuit challenging the moratorium in 2012, and the state Supreme Court ruled that the ban was invalid in October of 2012, citing the city’s inability to prove that drilling prevents an impending crisis. Attorneys for the city filed an appeal of that decision the following month, and while the moratorium expired at the end of 2013, the city was still scheduled to have an appeal proceeding in February. Now that David’s administration has dropped the appeal, that proceeding will not be taking place. There’s currently no timetable on when New York State will reach a decision on hydrofracking.
