Environmentalists slammed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for not acting before a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing in the state lifted yesterday.

The Republican governor conditionally vetoed a fracking ban passed by the Legislature in 2011, opting instead to institute a one-year suspension. Though New Jersey is not a target for unconventional drilling, opponents of fracking see Christie's move as an implied approval of fracking, which has taken hold in neighboring Pennsylvania and is being debated in New York. But the governor has stressed a need for caution.

"The potential environmental concerns with fracking in our state must be studied and weighed carefully against the potential benefits of increasing access to natural gas in New Jersey," he said in a statement accompanying his veto in 2011. "The decision on whether to ban fracking outright or regulate it for environmental protection must be developed on the basis of sound policy and legitimate science."

Fracking is often used to access oil and gas trapped in shale by blasting chemicals, sand and water deep underground. New Jersey does not have any known shale formations. Still, environmentalists there have witnessed development in Pennsylvania and elsewhere and are concerned about fracking's impacts on air and water, and about its release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

"Hurricane Sandy provides us a grim reminder of why we need to move away from extreme energy sources like fracking that are perpetuating climate change while threatening drinking water, public health and the environment," Jim Walsh of the environmental group Food and Water Watch said in a statement.

Christie also vetoed a bill in September that would have banned New Jersey treatment plants from accepting fracking wastewater. News reports have said Garden State facilities are taking on waste from Pennsylvania fracking despite lacking the equipment to purify the chemicals used in the process, though at least one facility has denied accepting the waste (EnergyWire, June 6, 2012).

Environmentalists are now calling on the Legislature, which had passed the wastewater treatment measure with bipartisan support, to override the governor's veto on that bill.

"If legislators campaign less and govern more by emphasizing good public policy now like banning frack waste and fighting the lifting of the moratorium, they'll be pleasantly surprised in coming elections," said Dave Pringle, campaign director for the New Jersey Environmental Federation.

One lawmaker, Republican Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlon, introduced a bill this month that would prohibit fracking in New Jersey until U.S. EPA completes a nationwide study, due out in late 2014, and until the state Department of Environmental Protection does its own risk analysis.