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It’s been 12 years since then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned fracking in New York — a dozen years in which Southern Tier residents have had to watch their neighbors across the Pennsylvania state line prosper while their own towns rot.
A decade-plus, also, where fracking’s supposed perils have completely failed to prove real anywhere.
If Albany cared about reality, it’d lift the ban and enjoy the ensuing riches.
If.
Instead, folks in Chemung County can only envy those in Bradford County, Pa.
Both sit atop the Marcellus Shale, the largest natural gas field in America.
Bradford has reaped the rich rewards of the fracking boom as companies from around the country exploit Marcellus.
Chemung, which had started to share in the boom, has lost out since 2014.
Bradford County and its municipalities collect over $10 million a year in payments from gas companies; individual landowners earn more in royalties from 1,500 wells.
Fracking also powers up the local economy: Towanda, Pa., has a median household income of $61,000 and a county poverty rate of 13%.
The figures for Elmira, across the border in New York: $43,000 and 30% in Chemung.
Towanda’s violent crime rate is roughly 60% below the national rate; Elmira’s, 52% above.
High-school graduation rates are 15 points higher in Bradford; Chemung has a vastly higher rate of OD deaths.
So . . . why ban fracking, again?
The prophesied dire side effects — ranging from deadly air pollution and groundwater contamination to, yes, earthquakes — never showed.
There’s not even a carbon-emissions issue: The gas is still coming out of the ground and emitting carbon as it powers the nation — New Yorkers just see zero benefit from it.
Bruce Blakeman’s vow to allow fracking is one big reason he means real hope for New York — and Hochul’s refusal another sign of how hopeless a leader she is.