CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

The city of Syracuse became the latest municipality to ban a controversial technique used with natural gas drilling, following Albany, Buffalo and a dozen or so towns that have moved to restrict or prohibit hydraulic fracturing within its limits.

The Syracuse Common Council approved the ban this afternoon.

Like bans in Albany and Buffalo, the move is largely symbolic. The state Department of Environmental Conservation has proposed banning surface drilling within the Syracuse watershed, and geologists and gas companies don’t anticipate much gas coming out of the northern portion of the Marcellus Shale.

But the ban still sends a message, one that the gas industry didn’t take too kindly.

“The city of Syracuse’s ban on hydraulic fracture stimulation does not consider the safe history of natural gas exploration in New York, the strict regulatory structure of local, state and federal governmental bodies that regulate our industry, and the 60-year record of success in this country,” Brad Gill, executive director of the state’s Independent Oil & Gas Association, said in a statement.

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