The Catskill Landowners Association issued a press release today stating their opposition to any ban on gas drilling in the New York City watershed that does not include compensation for Catskills landowners.
“The Catskill Landowners Association views natural gas exploration and development as a right vested in land ownership, not something that can be legislated away on a whim,” Catskill Landowners Association President Robert Bishop said.
They join state senator John Bonacic in calling on NYC, many of whose elected officials are opposed to drilling in the watershed, to pay for a ban as though it were a regulatory taking.
From the other side of this issue: Sullivan County resident Liz Bucar, who has a look at the legal history of regulatory taking and links it with a growing trend toward corporate personhood in the courts.
In that context, NYS Senator John Bonacic, the Northern Wayne Property Owners’ Association (NWPOA) and energy corporations have begun a campaign of hostage-taking. In an “Alice-Down-The-Rabbit-Hole” logical warp, they have demanded that millions of people who depend on water from the Delaware River Basin and New York City Watershed pay landholders NOT to risk that water supply with a toxic soup of corporate fracking fluids.
Here's the CLA press release:
