The New York Legislature needs to hurry up and pass a law that would tell natural gas drillers to slow down.

Two versions of one very simple bill—one before the Assembly and another introduced in the Senate—would impose a moratorium on the issuance of any state permits for a certain kind of gas-drilling technique with the suitably frightening moniker “hydro-fracking.”

It may not be as scary as it sounds. Or it may be worse. That’s why the Legislature would be wise to tell the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to put a hold on any permits for such an operation until 120 days after the federal Environmental Protection Agency has finished its report on the subject.

Drillers now have their eyes on a method to get to more underground deposits of natural gas, via fewer surface-level wellheads, by drilling sideways and pushing large volumes of water and other chemicals under high pressure through their pipes to break up the rock and release the gas.

It is a process that has been used for decades, but mostly in other states with different types of geologic properties. The reasonable fear of environmental activists in New York is that applying the process to the Marcellus and Utica shale formations could not only cause serious pollution to the area’s sources of drinking water but also release dangerous amounts (like there’s such a thing as a safe amount) of naturally occurring radioactive material.

Last week’s 16-hour blowout of a natural gas well northeast of Pittsburgh, which spewed gas and polluted water 75 feet into the air before crews could bring it under control Friday, only emphasizes those concerns. Pennsylvania, which has rushed to tap into trapped Marcellus shale gases, will launch a full investigation of that incident.

Unearthing all the natural gas that we believe is hiding down there is an attractive proposition. The stuff burns cleaner than oil or, certainly, coal. It doesn’t have to be imported from countries that don’t like us. It would provide cash income for landowners who lease their property and jobs for those who dig the wells.

But there is clearly no hurry. And, even more clearly, reason for caution.

Another kind of digging, the kind done by the journalists who work for such operations as the nonprofit Web-based ProPublica, suggests that hydro-fracking has caused a lot of serious contamination of soil and water. The concerns have been enough to move EPA to take a fresh look at the matter and prompted some members of Congress to want to reconsider the Bush-era laws that exempted hydro-fracking from federal oversight.

As wonderful as it could be to have a homegrown source of natural gas, the gas will be burned up. The pollution will stay behind.

Buffalo voters have some extra say in the matter, as our Sen. Antoine Thompson is the chairman of the Senate’s Environmental Conservation Committee. As such, we should use our influence on him, and he should use his influence on the committee, to move this legislation along.

For those who are tempted to leave the matter to the experts who drill for gas, or to the government agencies that oversee them, we have two letters for you.

BP.