Ithaca lawyer wins international prize for anti-frack efforts

Helen Slottjefirst came across natural gas drilling leases in 2007 while helping her brother-in-law search for a small farm to buy in upstate New York. She knew almost nothing about such leases. After all, her previous work as a lawyer back in New Hampshire and Boston had focused on bankruptcy, failing banks and commercial realestate.

But the more she learned about the gas drilling technique of hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, which was starting to the south in Pennsylvania, the more concerned she became. Then New York officials began to weigh how to open the state to gas companies that were using leases to gain drilling rights on hundreds of thousands ofacres.

Becoming a quick study in state mining law, Slottje developed a legal theory that contradicted what was then commonly accepted as fact — that if the state approved and regulated fracking, local governments would have no choice but to allow it everywhere, like it ornot.

Now, some 74 towns across the state's potential gas-drilling region of the Marcellus Shale have adopted fracking bans based on her idea that local zoning codes can bar such "heavy industrial" uses regardless of what the state does. Another 86 towns have supporters advocating a zoning ban, and 99 towns have enacted moratoriums while waiting to see whathappens.

Grassroots zoning bans in two towns have survived legal challenges in two lower state courts filed by industry and pro-fracking landowners. Appeals of those cases are pending before the state's highest court with a decision expected in a few months. Meanwhile, the state of New York has yet to render a decision on whether or when to allowfracking.

Slottje's legal advice, provided free to towns that want it, has made her the North American winner of the prestigious $150,000 Goldman Environmental Prize, awarded annually by the San Francisco-based foundation of the late Richard andRhoda Goldman. Six winners globally are selected annually by an internationaljury.

The 47-year-old Slottje has become a hero to those who want to block fracking and its risks to air and water quality. She's also a villain to fracking supporters who see gas drilling as a step to financial prosperity that should be left up to landowners. The drilling supporters have attempted to paint Slottje as a tool of shadowy elites, sparking a wave of anti-ban votes in towns that wantfracking.

Both lawyers, Helen and her husband, David, live just outside the small Finger Lakes city of Ithaca in central New York. They share their residence with three cats and a dog in a closely-packed, suburban-style subdivision overlooking the vineyard region of Seneca Lake. An upstairs office with a treadmill in front of a computer and keyboard is where she does her seriousthinking.

Slottje is a relative newcomer to the region, having grown up in Needham, near Boston, and later moving with her family to southern New Hampshire to finish high school. After majoring in economics at theCollege of the Holy Cross, she got a law degree fromthe University of Pennsylvania, finishing her last year atHarvard University.

She then went into corporate and business law, working in New Hampshire for three years mostly on bankruptcy and bank failure cases, and moved to an old-line Boston law firm where she focused on commercial real estate and met herhusband.

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Taxonomy

• Water Security
• Fracking