New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo plans to ban the controversial gas drilling process known as fracking across the Empire State.

The move comes in the wake of a long-awaited report issued by his administration's health commissioner that said there were too many "red flags" and potential health risks to permit the practice.

"Evidence from the studies we reviewed raised public health concerns," Commissioner Howard Zucker told the governor in a cabinet meeting according to New York Daily News. "I cannot support high-volume hydraulic fracturing in the great state of New York."

Zucker would not allow his own children to live near a fracking site, the public-health official admitted, according to the Wall Street Journal. He said the "cumulative concerns" about fracking gave him "reason to pause."

Joe Martens, New York's Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner, meanwhile, said a formal regulation banning fracking would be issued by early next year.

Fracking, which is also known as hydraulic fracturing or "horizontal drilling coupled with multi-stage hydraulic fracturing," is an extraction technique that creates fractures in rocks and rock formations by injecting fluid into cracks to force them further open. Thirty-two states allow the practice.

In New York, the process could have been used to explore the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale, but the state has had a moratorium on fracking since 2008, according to New York Daily News.

Cuomo had waited on his final decision on the practice until after the November election, a move critics said was designed to avoid antagonizing supporters or opponents. Cuomo's former brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is an outspoken opponent of the practice, WSJ reports.

Many environmentalists believe that fracking comes with a number of adverse effects, including air emissions, high water consumption and contamination and the risk of earthquakes.

Proponents, on the other hand, consider the assessments overblown and point to the much-needed economic boost to upstate New York they say natural gas exploration could have provided, New York Daily News explained. In states such as North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Texas, fracking has "fueled a natural gas and oil boom" that also helped bring global oil prices to their recent record lows, according to WSJ.

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