This article by Chauncey Ross was published in the Indiana Gazette on October 5th, 2019.
PITTSBURGH — Six years after a plan for a drilling waste-disposal injection well was first revealed in northern Indiana County and after area residents banded together against it, lawyers waged another battle Friday in Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court.
The dispute centers now on whether a home rule form of government passes Constitutional muster and empowers Grant Township to prohibit the dumping of fracking waste in its environment.
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection sued the community of 700 people in 2017 and after two years of trading arguments on paper — a case log that now extends 11 pages — attorneys argued their points in a 17-minute hearing at the state’s courtroom in Pittsburgh.
Watling asked the judges to dismiss the township’s counter claims in the case.
Karen Hoffman, a Philadelphia-based attorney representing Grant Township and its board of supervisors, argues that home rule invokes state statues as its basis of authority.
The legal fight between Grant Township and the injection-well proposal has taken two paths.
Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) prevailed late last year in a federal lawsuit charging that the township violated the company’s civil rights when it enacted a “community bill of rights” ordinance that included a ban on injection wells.
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