Anschutz Exploration Corp. v. Town of Dryden.

In the present caseew York trial court has considered "whether a local municipality may use its power to regulate land use to prohibit exploration for, and production of, oil and natural gas. In 2011, the Town of Dryden amended its zoning ordinance to broadly prohibit the use of land within the Town "to conduct any exploration for natural gas and/or petroleum; to drill any well for natural gas and or petroleum; to transfer, store, process or treat natural gas and/or petroleum" and numerous other uses associated with oil and gas production. Anschutz, which stated that it had gas leases covering about 22,200 acres in the Town—over one-third of its total area—and had invested over $5 million in its operations within Dryden, sued the Town. It sought a declaration that the Town's zoning ordinance was expressly superseded by New York's Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Law (OGSML), or that it was preempted as inconsistent with the substantive provisions of that law. The Town moved to dismiss the action and for summary judgment declaring its change to the zoning ordinance valid. The court concluded that, "as both statutes preempt only local regulations 'relating' to the applicable industry, they must be afforded the same plain meaning—that they do not expressly preempt local regulation of land use, but only regulations dealing with operations." The court explained that "under this construction, local governments may exercise their powers to regulate land use to determine where within their borders gas drilling may or may not take place, while [the Department of Environmental Conservation] regulates all technical operational matters on a consistent statewide basis in locations where operations are permitted by law." The court saw no difficulty in the fact that Dryden's zoning law prohibited all drilling activity. It noted that the Court of Appeals had previously approved such blanket restrictions, and that "a municipality may exercise its zoning authority to completely ban mining within its jurisdiction." The court did find that the Town had gone too far in one respect: the zoning statute purported to invalidate permits "issued by any local, state or federal agency, commission or board for a use which would violate" the zoning ordinance. The court held that while the Town of Dryden could regulate land use within the Town, it could not "invalidate a permit lawfully issued by another governmental entity." This provision was, however, severable, and did not affect the validity of the remainder of the zoning ordinance.