Natural gas company Anshutz Exploration has sued the town of Dryden in central New York in an effort to strike down a recent zoning law prohibiting gas drilling there. While New York State is considering whether to allow hydraulic fracturing, more than a dozen municipalities have enacted gas-drilling bans or restrictions. An attorney for Anschutz contends that when New York amended its environmental conservation law in 1981, it gave the state power to regulate the oil-and-gas industry but confined local governments to regulations involving the industry’s use of roads.