CHECK OUT OUR LATEST PRESS RELEASE UNDER SPAN DOCUMENTS
_ WHO ARE WE?
We're residents of Ulster and Greene counties who first came together in outrage at the likelihood of statewide water, land, and air contamination from hydrofracking.
The fragmented and ineffective NY Legislative approaches, the obvious dissembling by the DEC, and the realization that we had no legal recourse became our wake up call.
This led to discussions about Constitutional and Environmental Law.
We concluded that hydrofracking is the latest in a long history of preemptions of the people’s decision-making authority that have caused considerable harm to our communities.
WHAT DO WE WANT?
The right of the People to decide sane energy policy and the best way to achieve it,
as well as the imposition of laws that will hold culpable
those who poison us while hiding behind their corporate shield.
HOW DO WE MAKE THAT HAPPEN?
SPAN, with the help of others from around the State,
drafted a law, New York Public Law #1, which would make hydrofracking and all hydrofracking related activities illegal throughout NY State.
WHY ILLEGAL?
The traditional way to prevent irreparable harm is by enacting laws criminalizing such behavior and by imposing deterrent-level penalties. Clearly, hydrofracking is a crime,
but hundred of years of legal maneuvering by corporate directors in collusion with Federal and State Legislatures and Courts have reduced public participation to
the rigged regulatory arena.
WHY RIGGED? WON'T REGULATION PROTECT US?
Not a chance. The DEC has no authority to stop hydrofracking. The DEC is not a policy-making agency; it's a permitting office -- in the case of oil and gas development -- required to develop NY's oil and gas resources while minimizing damage and protecting people and the environment. In other words, a contradiction that kills.
WHAT ABOUT LOCAL ORDINANCES?
Over the past 150 years, legislators and judges have stripped municipal corporations of genuine governing authority.
In an effort to assert their authority, a patchwork of NY communities are enacting moratoria, zoning and community rights laws in order to forestall or outlaw
hydrofracking in their jurisdictions.
Local ordinances won’t stop poisoned air and water from crossing town borders, or halt thousands of diesel-belching trucks traveling on county and state roads within a town, or expose the current shell game of waste disposal.
Municipal laws opposing fracking are nevertheless meaningful as an
expression of the people's will.
How can towns extend the expression of that will to a solution that will
legally protect all New Yorkers?
Only the statewide criminalization of fracking and all fracking related activities can do that.
Town resolutions supporting criminalization will affirm our resolve to stop the criminal assault on our lives, our ecosystem and our sovereign authority.
WHAT WOULD STATEWIDE CRIMINALIZATION ACCOMPLISH?
New York Public Law #1 embodies the power to keep us safe. It also challenges the dangerous assumption that energy policy -- how it’s derived, who profits, who pays -- is the private property of corporate directors in collusion with regulatory agencies.
By stating unequivocally that we as the sovereign people make this murderous and extreme fossil fuel extraction illegal, we are establishing a model of legislation necessary in a rational democracy in a world at risk.
Read the draft law, the Primer and the Resolution in Support of NY Public Law #1
on this website.
IS IT POSSIBLE?
It won't be easy. It won't happen overnight. It requires an all out effort to educate ourselves and others about how and for whom our government works and how to overturn this minority-rule governance structure.
Are you ready?
We're residents of Ulster and Greene counties who first came together in outrage at the likelihood of statewide water, land, and air contamination from hydrofracking.
The fragmented and ineffective NY Legislative approaches, the obvious dissembling by the DEC, and the realization that we had no legal recourse became our wake up call.
This led to discussions about Constitutional and Environmental Law.
We concluded that hydrofracking is the latest in a long history of preemptions of the people’s decision-making authority that have caused considerable harm to our communities.
WHAT DO WE WANT?
The right of the People to decide sane energy policy and the best way to achieve it,
as well as the imposition of laws that will hold culpable
those who poison us while hiding behind their corporate shield.
HOW DO WE MAKE THAT HAPPEN?
SPAN, with the help of others from around the State,
drafted a law, New York Public Law #1, which would make hydrofracking and all hydrofracking related activities illegal throughout NY State.
WHY ILLEGAL?
The traditional way to prevent irreparable harm is by enacting laws criminalizing such behavior and by imposing deterrent-level penalties. Clearly, hydrofracking is a crime,
but hundred of years of legal maneuvering by corporate directors in collusion with Federal and State Legislatures and Courts have reduced public participation to
the rigged regulatory arena.
WHY RIGGED? WON'T REGULATION PROTECT US?
Not a chance. The DEC has no authority to stop hydrofracking. The DEC is not a policy-making agency; it's a permitting office -- in the case of oil and gas development -- required to develop NY's oil and gas resources while minimizing damage and protecting people and the environment. In other words, a contradiction that kills.
WHAT ABOUT LOCAL ORDINANCES?
Over the past 150 years, legislators and judges have stripped municipal corporations of genuine governing authority.
In an effort to assert their authority, a patchwork of NY communities are enacting moratoria, zoning and community rights laws in order to forestall or outlaw
hydrofracking in their jurisdictions.
Local ordinances won’t stop poisoned air and water from crossing town borders, or halt thousands of diesel-belching trucks traveling on county and state roads within a town, or expose the current shell game of waste disposal.
Municipal laws opposing fracking are nevertheless meaningful as an
expression of the people's will.
How can towns extend the expression of that will to a solution that will
legally protect all New Yorkers?
Only the statewide criminalization of fracking and all fracking related activities can do that.
Town resolutions supporting criminalization will affirm our resolve to stop the criminal assault on our lives, our ecosystem and our sovereign authority.
WHAT WOULD STATEWIDE CRIMINALIZATION ACCOMPLISH?
New York Public Law #1 embodies the power to keep us safe. It also challenges the dangerous assumption that energy policy -- how it’s derived, who profits, who pays -- is the private property of corporate directors in collusion with regulatory agencies.
By stating unequivocally that we as the sovereign people make this murderous and extreme fossil fuel extraction illegal, we are establishing a model of legislation necessary in a rational democracy in a world at risk.
Read the draft law, the Primer and the Resolution in Support of NY Public Law #1
on this website.
IS IT POSSIBLE?
It won't be easy. It won't happen overnight. It requires an all out effort to educate ourselves and others about how and for whom our government works and how to overturn this minority-rule governance structure.
Are you ready?
