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History
- Referred to environmental conservation
- Referred to environmental conservation
Companion bill
The same bill in the other chamber. A bill becomes law when one version passes both houses and the governor signs it, so either number can carry it.
Prohibits the transportation of any waste product or byproduct from hydraulic fracturing operations
In Assembly Committee · Environmental Conservation · Sponsor Daniel O'Donnell
Full text
The text isn't available here yet. Check nysenate.gov.
Sponsor's memo
Title of bill
An act to amend the environmental conservation law, in relation to prohibiting the transportation or shipment of any waste product or byproduct from hydraulic fracturing operations
Purpose
The purpose of this legislation is to prevent the disposal of high volume hydraulic fracturing waste from being transported or disposed of in New York State.
Summary of specific provisions
This legislation amends the environmental conservation law to prohibit high volume hydraulic fracturing waste or waste by-products from being transported or shipped into or out of New York State for treatment, discharge, disposal, or storage purposes.
Justification
New York State waste and treatment facilities are currently the recipient of waste products from hydraulic fracturing products and by-products. Waste products and by-predicts from hydraulic fracturing can legally be disposed of at municipal water treatment plants because the waste is currently exempt from the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws. As the result of this exemption, natural gas operators transporting fracking waste are not considered to be transporting or receiving "hazardous" waste, and thus are not required to meet the safeguards established by RCRA and other regulations. In the absence of federal regulations, states regulate the handling, treatment, and storage of fracking waste.
In New York State, high volume hydraulic fracturing has not been authorized, and regulations for handling and disposing of this waste continue to undergo review. In addition, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has not completed its study of the possible health impacts of such waste products on drinking water resources and is working on national pretreatment standards for waste disposal of in municipal sewage-treatment plants or private treatment plants, after finding that many of them are not properly equipped to treat this type of wastewater, and may be discharging pollutants to rivers and other streams. Additionally, the EPA warned that there was probably not enough capacity at out of state treatment plants to handle polluted water from New York.
In March of 2012, the Niagara Falls City Council blocked a proposal by its local waste treatment facility to accept fracking waste in order to offset declining revenues. The City of Niagara Falls and Buffalo have both adopted local legislation banning the treatment, transport, storage and disposal of drilling fluids within city limits.
Prior legislative history
This is a new bill.
Fiscal implications
None.
Effective date
This bill shall take effect immediately.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.