Why was an environmental law firm sanctioned for helping to block a toxic fracking wastewater project?
This article by Justin Nobel appeared in Rolling Stone Magazine, January 10, 2018.
Last Friday, a federal judge in western Pennsylvania issued sanctions on two lawyers from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a law firm that for 15 years has been helping municipalities fight industrial projects by encouraging ordinances that recognize the right to local self-government and the rights of nature, including “rivers, streams, and aquifers,” to “exist, flourish, and naturally evolve.” The latest case stems from CELDF’s work in Grant Township, a rural community with a population of 741 located about 80 miles northeast of Pittsburgh. Six years ago, agents from Pennsylvania General Energy, an oil-and-gas exploration company, met privately with local officials to discuss the development of a fracking wastewater injection well in the township. Under PGE’s proposal, the well, which received EPA approval in 2014, would become a busy industrial site, each day allowing 42,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive fracking wastewater to be injected into a layer of rock 7,500 feet beneath the community. With the help of CELDF, residents have successfully fought off the project for the past six years, initially by adopting a local ordinance that granted residents the right to self-government, and granted legal rights to nature. In its ruling last week, the court called CELDF’s legal tactics “implausible.” MORE…