New Jersey's one-year moratorium on the controversial technique of natural-gas extraction known as fracking expired Thursday with little fanfare.
While energy industry officials maintain that the natural-gas deposits in the state's northwest corner are too deep and uncertain to make hydraulic fracturing economically viable in the near term, environmentalists have lobbied heavily for continuing the ban as protection against the type of development seen across the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania.
Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon Jr. (R., Monmouth) is pushing legislation to renew the moratorium until a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study on fracking's impact on drinking-water supplies is completed - findings are not expected until next year.
