Rocky Mountain Sense A fracking decision in Colorado is a win for good public policy.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/rocky-mountain-sense-1462231127
Mark down Monday’s decision on hydraulic fracturing by the Colorado Supreme Court as a win for rationality in public policy, which at times can seem an increasingly rare event.
Colorado’s highest court ruled that the measures to ban fracking, which were passed by the cities of Longmont and Fort Collins, are invalid because state law pre-empts them.
Set aside for a moment the pitched battles over fracking’s safety. The issue here is analogous to the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, whose purpose is to settle conflicts between laws passed by Congress and laws legislated by the states. Similarly, the Colorado high court is arguing that state law supercedes local law when the state legislature acts.
In the particular matter of fracking, the common sense of this proposition should be self-evident. The geology of fracking typically covers large areas. In Colorado that is the mountain range known as the Front Range, which includes the state’s most populous cities, including Denver and Boulder. CONTINUE AT SITE
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