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.

Lawyer Rick Watling asked the judges to rule that the ban on oil and gas waste fluid disposal in Grant’s Home Rule Charter is unlawful because Grant only has police powers to limit land uses through its zoning powers (under the Municipalities Planning Code).
The DEP’s position is that its guiding laws, in this case the state Gas and Oil Act, have the upper hand over regulations imposed at the local level.
“If Grant wishes to attempt prohibiting oil and gas waste fluid disposal within the township, it must use only lawful mechanisms in this effort, and it did not do so in this case,” according to a DEP summary of its position.

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.

(To read the rest of this article at its original source please click HERE.)