On Thursday, 50+ activists organized by Food & Water Watch rallied outside Governor Hochul’s Manhattan office to protest a proposal by Southern Tier Solutions to evade New York’s long standing fracking ban with a dangerous CO2 fracking scam. The newly formed Texas company’s plans to drill thousands of wells and construct a dozen gas-burning power plants in the Southern Tier pose serious threats to water, communities, and the climate.

Alex Beauchamp, Food & Water Watch Northeast Region Director said:

“Fracking has no place in New York. It was true ten years ago when New York became the first state to ban the dirty, harmful practice, and it’s true today. Governor Hochul and the Legislature must get out ahead of Southern Tier Solutions’ profiteering scam and ban CO2 fracking outright.”

More than 90 organizations wrote to Governor Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins, Speaker Heastie, and DEC Commissioner Seggos last month, calling for a ban on CO2 fracking.

Zephyr Teachout, Law Professor at Fordham Law School said: “Our planet is burning up, and we are drowning. Here we are, more than nine years after one of the greatest climate victories, the banning of fracking in New York — and we are not going to let frackers back in. We are not going to allow a sacrifice zone in the Southern Tier. We are saying ‘hell no’.”

Dr. Sandra Steingraber, a biologist and co-founder of Concerned Health Professionals of New York, senior scientist at the Science and Environmental Health Network and lead author of “The Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking” said: “What this Texas gas company is proposing is to turn New York State into a laboratory to conduct a giant experiment using taxpayer dollars that involves burning fossil fuels, trapping the carbon dioxide, and using it to frack more fossil fuels out of the earth in ways that imperil our air, water, climate, and health. What we are here to propose is NO. Governor Hochul needs to ban this nonsense. Fracking is fracking, and the harms of fracking are proven. Period.”

Sara Gronim of 350Brooklyn said: “The so-called ‘Southern Tier Solutions’ project is absurd. The company claims this will yield ‘clean energy’ but it’s just another way to drill for methane gas, a powerful climate pollutant. Governor Hochul and the Department of Environmental Conservation must stop this project.”

Pete Sikora, Climate and Inequality Campaigns Director for New York Communities for Change, said: “Governor Hochul should end this nonsense now, not leave open the possibility of an end run around New York’s historic fracking ban via tax farming for absurd federal oil and gas tax subsidies.”

Dorian Fulvio of 350NYC said: “Governor Hochul and the Legislature must ban fracking with carbon dioxide immediately. Proceeding with this CO2 fracking experiment would be the height of irresponsibility, risking the health and safety of New Yorkers, and for what? This project is just another delusional excuse to continue our addiction to fossil fuels and enrich the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the rest of the human race. New York State is already in serious jeopardy of missing its 2030 CLCPA clean energy and climate targets. It would be smarter to expedite renewable energy installations and to tell Southern Tier Solutions that NYS will not be its guinea pig.”

Roger Downs, Conservation Director for the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, said: “In 2020, the legislature and the governor came together to codify New York’s historic fracking ban and close loopholes that the oil and gas industry sought to exploit. Governor Hochul and the legislature must answer the call once again and protect all New Yorkers from this latest fracking threat that will most certainly drain limited DEC resources and divert us from our nation leading climate goals. Banning CO2 fracking and its harmful environmental impacts should be a primary objective of New York Lawmakers in 2024.”

Jeanne Bergman, Advisor on Policy and Sustainability for Sane Energy Project, said: “Regrettably, when New York banned hydrofracking, the state did not ban all drilling for gas and oil. As a result, a newly minted out-of-state company is now prospecting for cash and land, hoping to fleece investors and taxpayers with a bogus, untested, ‘sustainable’ CO2 fracking and carbon storage project.  New York’s strong commitment to a clean energy transition and the wave of federal IRA funds are inevitably attracting scoundrels selling snake oil like net-zero fracking and direct air carbon capture, technologies that have never succeeded. This company is prospecting for capital, hoping to extract money to be deposited in out-of-state or off-shore accounts. The Department of Environmental Protection and other New York State agencies must take action to reject false solutions to the climate crisis and protect our people, economy, and environment.”

A recording of the event is available here.

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