Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund

WCDems speak up for communities resisting fracking industry

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West Chester Dem Committee letter to Governor Wolf, below. For more on Grant and Highland municipalities’ resistance against the fracking industry and PA DEP, see “The Rights of Nature Movement Goes on Trial” in Rolling Stone, 1/10/18, and “How a Small Town Is Standing Up to Fracking” also in Rolling Stone, both by Justin Nobel.

37 S. High St.
West Chester PA 19382
November 28, 2017

Governor Tom Wolf
Office of the Governor
508 Main Capitol Building
Harrisburg, PA 17120

Dear Governor Wolf,

As active citizens in the county seat of Chester County, we are very concerned by the Commonwealth’s actions in promoting pipeline construction in our environs.

As you well know, homeowners’ rights are being overridden, plans are being made to route a pipeline virtually underneath the Chester County Public Library in Exton, and many properties are threatened or already devastated (see, e.g., “Sinkhole opens up during pipeline drilling in West Whiteland“).

Just as upsetting to us, the PA DEP has joined with fracking operators to sue the municipalities of Grant and Highland PA. Those communities’ apparent offense is to stand up for their civic and environmental rights in just the way that West Chester and other PA municipalities are doing and intend to continue doing.

We call on you as our Governor to support community environmental rights and to call off the PA DEP from actively supporting pipeline construction and from suing our fellow municipalities.

Thank you for your attention and for any reply to our concerns,

Sincerely yours,

Stephanie Markstein, Chair
Democratic Committee of West Chester PA
letter approved by vote at our Nov. 27, 2017, Committee meeting

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Companies persecute lawyers defending environmental rights

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And what is the state doing to protect the citizens’ rights to fight off environmental contamination? Unfortunately, the PA Department of Environmental Protection has itself sued Grant and Highland municipalities for trying to fend off fracking waste injection through their Home Rule Charters. Our state protecting the polluters: totally unacceptable!

Press release from CELDF, Jan 5, 2018

Court Awards $52,000 to Oil and Gas Company and Calls for Disciplinary Action Against Attorney

MERCERSBURG, PA: Today, the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania issued an order imposing sanctions on two attorneys defending a Community Bill of Rights Ordinance adopted by Grant Township, Pennsylvania. The Township has spent years fighting to stop frack wastewater injection wells from being sited in the community with assistance from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF).

Injection wells – which involve the high pressure underground dumping of millions of gallons of frack wastewater, which contains toxins, carcinogens, and other chemicals – cause earthquakes, can contaminate drinking water, and bring other environmental and public health impacts.

Today’s ruling comes as part of a lawsuit in which Pennsylvania General Energy, LLC (PGE) is suing Grant Township to overturn the Township’s ban on frack wastewater injection wells. (Pennsylvania General Energy Company, LLC v. Grant Township)

Not satisfied with suing the community and questioning its authority to protect the people and environment of Grant Township from injection wells, the company decided to punish its lawyers by seeking monetary sanctions against them.

“At a time when Americans more and more are looking to the courts for reason and justice, today we find neither, as corporate forces once again have been able to wield our institutions of government to punish those working to elevate the rights of communities over fossil fuel corporations,” stated CELDF’s Associate Director Mari Margil.

Magistrate Judge Susan Baxter earlier found that the Township’s prohibition on injection wells violated the corporation’s constitutional rights. The case is scheduled for a jury trial in May, at which PGE will seek hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Township, claiming that it suffered harm because the company has been prevented from dumping frack waste in a residential area next to the Township’s sole source of drinking water.

Mari Margil
mmargil@celdf.org
(503) 381-1755

How a Small Town Is Standing Up to Fracking

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By Justin Nobel, Rolling Stone, June 1, 2017 [n.b. relevant to West Chester because of our Home Rule Community status, our environmental Community Bill of Rights passed by voters in 2015, and ongoing initiatives to defend our environment and health.]

Grant Township, Pennsylvania, population 741, has became the front line of a radical new environmental movement – and they’re not backing down

On October 24th, 2012, several agents from Pennsylvania General Energy, an oil-and-gas exploration company, met privately with local officials from the rural western Pennsylvania community of Grant Township. Fracking was booming in Pennsylvania, and PGE had been trucking tens of thousands of gallons of fracking wastewater to faraway injection wells in Ohio. Developing an injection well somewhere in Pennsylvania could save the company around $2 million a year, and Grant Township, a swath of woods and hayfields slightly larger than Manhattan and populated by a mere 741 people, seemed like an especially good spot.

Most of the meeting’s attendees – which included the three Grant Township supervisors, a rep from the local state senator’s office and an official from the county’s office of planning and development – will not speak about the event. But about 10 months later, one of the supervisors passed along a notice to a retired elementary-school teacher named Judy Wanchisn. In lettering so small “you need a magnifying glass to read,” says Wanchisn, the notice declared that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “plans to issue an Underground Injection Control (UIC) permit to PGE  . . .  to construct and operate one class II-D brine disposal injection well.” Wanchisn had no idea what that meant, but she could tell it was bad….

read more at Rolling Stone

Grant Township, Pennsylvania, population 741, has became the front line of a radical new environmental movement – and they’re not backing down

On October 24th, 2012, several agents from Pennsylvania General Energy, an oil-and-gas exploration company, met privately with local officials from the rural western Pennsylvania community of Grant Township. Fracking was booming in Pennsylvania, and PGE had been trucking tens of thousands of gallons of fracking wastewater to faraway injection wells in Ohio. Developing an injection well somewhere in Pennsylvania could save the company around $2 million a year, and Grant Township, a swath of woods and hayfields slightly larger than Manhattan and populated by a mere 741 people, seemed like an especially good spot.

Most of the meeting’s attendees – which included the three Grant Township supervisors, a rep from the local state senator’s office and an official from the county’s office of planning and development – will not speak about the event. But about 10 months later, one of the supervisors passed along a notice to a retired elementary-school teacher named Judy Wanchisn. In lettering so small “you need a magnifying glass to read,” says Wanchisn, the notice declared that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency “plans to issue an Underground Injection Control (UIC) permit to PGE  . . .  to construct and operate one class II-D brine disposal injection well.” Wanchisn had no idea what that meant, but she could tell it was bad….

read more at Rolling Stone