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Alec Baldwin, actor and host of Here's the Thing podcast, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., environmental attorney, host of "Ring of Fire" radio show and podcast, and president of the Waterkeeper Alliance board, continue the debate over hydraulic fracturing upstate.

EVENT: Alec Baldwin will hosts a screening of "Gasland" at the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse on Saturday, June 2, 2012. 

An historic preservation group is weighing in on hydro-fracking for the first time, and they don't like what they’ve been learning about the gas drilling process. They say it would change the nature of the landscape from rural to industrial and would detract from heritage tourism in the Marcellus shale region.

Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica reporter; Mark Boling, executive vice president, general counsel, and secretary at Southwestern Energy; and Stu Gruskin, consultant and former executive deputy of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, discuss fracking—how it works, its pros and cons, its promise and perils.

“Avengers” star Mark Ruffalo, a vocal anti-fracking advocate, called the process of extracting natural gas “illegitimate” and described his activism as a “sacrificial act.”

Mark Ruffalo, actor and co-founder of Water Defense, and Claire Sandberg, executive director of Water Defense, discuss their anti-fracking efforts and their renewable energy agenda.

T. Boone Pickens is an unlikely environmentalist. The native Oklahoman made his fortune in the oil business, and then, in 2008, shifted his focus to America's energy future. The result is the Pickens Plan, an energy policy to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil through alternative energy and natural gas. Pickens will detail his plan at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California, this week, where John Hockenberry is also speaking. 

A state Supreme Court judge has upheld a community's ban on gas drilling, in the first ruling on whether local governments can prevent drilling through local ordinances in New York state.

In his State of the Union, the president showed his support for more domestic energy exploration, and while we may have stopped one pipeline, we haven't changed a system that demands us to pipe more oil and natural gas further distances to power our everyday lives.

Regulators are seeking to fine a gas driller in Pennsylvania for water quality violations in New York.

The Environmental Protection Agency said New York regulators should set limits for radioactive materials in gas-drilling wastewater sent to public treatment plants before allowing any hydraulic fracturing of natural gas wells in the state.

State officials must now have to sift through tens of thousands of comments on New York’s plans for regulation of high volume hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking with the closure of public comment period on Thursday.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that fracking may be to blame for causing groundwater pollution. The controversial method of improving the productivity of oil and gas wells has been a source of debate across the country. The E.P.A. found that compounds likely associated with fracking chemicals had been detected in the groundwater beneath Pavillion, a small community in central Wyoming where residents say their well water reeks of chemicals. Health officials last year advised them not to drink their water after the E.P.A. found low levels hydrocarbons in their wells.

Hundreds of anti-hydraulic fracturing activists rallied outside the Tribeca Performing Arts Center to protest the drilling technique they see as a serious public health hazard. Inside the hearings, a Bloomberg administration official said the city regards proposed state controls on so-called fracking does not guarantee the safety of drinking water.

WNYC reporter Ilya Marritz discusses today's final public hearing on the state's proposals to regulate hydraulic fracturing (fracking).

The Bloomberg administration is poised Wednesday to express concern about Albany's plans to allow natural gas drilling near upstate reservoirs during a public hearing in Manhattan on the controversial technique known as fracking.

Thousands are expected to attend public hearings this week in Manhattan and the Catskills, on the controversial subject of hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking. 

Internal disagreements over how strictly gas drilling should be regulated have caused an inter-governmental agency to indefinitely postpone a vote on proposed rules for natural gas drilling in the Delaware River watershed.

Tonight, New York State regulators will hold the first of four public hearings on the Cuomo administration’s proposal to permit and regulate the natural gas drilling technique called “fracking.” While much of the discussion has focused on the environmental hazards, there is also debate over the economic benefits of fracking, and even the amount of gas contained in the Marcellus Shale.

Throughout upstate New York, town boards are debating its merits and some are deciding to use zoning to ban fracking locally. And as the debate heats up, it is pitting neighbor against neighbor: landowners who want gas leases against environmentalists and others who fear fracking.

The state's environmental agency has put the brakes on the process to approve the controversial natural gas drilling technique known as fracking on some private lands in New York because a key advisory panel will not make the November 1 deadline to issue a report.