Howard Husock Local Option How to drill, baby, drill—even in New York State.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/local-option
The 2024 election was a referendum on a wide range of issues, but there’s no doubt that increasing domestic fossil-fuel production—“energy dominance,” as Donald Trump now calls it—was on the ballot and won. Kamala Harris backed away from her past calls to ban fracking but nonetheless lost Pennsylvania, where voters seemed to doubt her sudden change of heart.
The pro-Trump vote in most counties outside Gotham suggests that pro-fracking sentiment played a role in the election in New York State. Trump won by overwhelming margins in the counties located above portions of the Marcellus Shale formation, which feeds natural gas extraction in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Many of these counties are economically distressed and have lost population. The time has come to give them a voice when it comes to permitting natural gas fracking, currently banned statewide.
At least 22 upstate New York counties sit atop Marcellus Shale deposits. These counties typically lag the state’s median household income level. Median income in Broome County, which is located on the Pennsylvania border and which nearly flipped from Biden to Trump (as of current data), is $63,000 compared with the statewide figure of $81,000. The county has lost 2 percent of its population since 2010, and 19 percent of residents live at or below the official poverty line. In western New York, Cattaraugus County, which also borders Pennsylvania, has a similar profile, with a median income of just $56,000. It has lost 5,000 of the 80,000 residents it had in 2010, and 16 percent live in poverty. It, too, voted for Trump in 2024. Indeed, outside of cities like Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo, the entire 2024 upstate county vote map is red.
Yet, despite these counties’ poverty and population loss and potential mineral wealth, the state legislature, dominated by downstate environmentalists, has banned fracking since 2020. Indeed, legislators went even further this year, prohibiting specific fracking-related practices, including the use of carbon dioxide rather than water to extract natural gas.
State legislators should consider a compromise: permit fracking in rural counties that badly need economic uplift but not in those where majorities are dead set against it. Like most states, New York has local option laws, which permit cities and counties to vote on whether to adopt controversial practices. Historically, local option laws have been the rule for permitting the sale of alcoholic beverages or gambling. In 2021, the same “opt-out” rule was applied to allowing marijuana retailers. About half of municipalities (751 of 1,520) opted out.
Local control of fracking could allow jurisdictions such as counties to opt in. As a first step, non-binding local referenda would let Albany know how local residents view the issue.
It’s worth noting that former New York representative Lee Zeldin, Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, campaigned for New York governor in 2022 on a pro-fracking platform. “Jobs can be created, we can generate revenue, we can drive down taxes,” Zeldin told reporters in July of that year. “There’s a huge benefit for the state to reverse that safe extraction of natural gas ban that we have.”
In his loss to Kathy Hochul in 2022, Zeldin won virtually every upstate county, as did Trump in 2024. His portfolio at EPA would not give him control over New York State’s fracking rules, but it would offer a bully pulpit from which to make the case that local communities should have the right to decide on the matter.
As the Ukraine war grinds on and Europe remains desperate to import natural gas rather than rely on Russia, New York State—like Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Dakota, and Texas—could become part of a natural-resource arsenal of democracy and promote American energy dominance. Local voters deserve the chance to make that happen.
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