A pair of measures championed by environmental and conservation groups will be left out of a final state budget agreement, lawmakers said Monday.
Funding for a health-specific study of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and language that would have moved the state's share of unclaimed bottle deposits to the Environmental Protection Fund were cut in final budget negotiations.
Both proposals are "not in the budget," said Assembly Environmental Chairman Robert Sweeney, D-Suffolk County. "Eventually, it was taken off the table."
Assembly Democrats had included $100,000 in their one-house budget proposal for a State University of New York research center to analyze the potential public health effects of hydrofracking, a much-debated technique of natural gas drilling.