Grant Township Stands Up to Intimidation Tactics
This press release was published by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund on November 11, 2019.
MERCERSBURG, PA: An oil and gas industry lawsuit – seeking to override a community’s ban on frack waste injection wells, and simultaneously discipline the lawyers working to defend the community – has been settled.
The Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association (PIOGA) and Pennsylvania General Energy (PGE) sued Grant Township, PA, in federal court to overturn its 2014 ban on frack waste injection wells. Such wells are known to introduce radioactive waste and other chemicals (undisclosed by corporations), as well as cause earthquakes, in the communities where they are sited.
The rural Indiana County community passed the ban to protect its only source of drinking water from the risk of permanent contamination. The township law secured the right of the people to protect their water, and the environmental rights of the people and ecosystems in the community to be protected from such threats.
The lawsuit sought to overturn the community’s democratically enacted prohibition on the wells. PIOGA and PGE argued that preventing oil and gas corporations from dumping frack waste in the community amounted to violation of the corporation’s civil rights, and the attorneys’ defense of the law to harassment. Therefore, they argued, the attorneys must be financially sanctioned for defending the community, and PGE sought to compel Grant Township to pay for the money the company spent to sue the community.
(To read the rest of this press release please click HERE.)