This article was published on March 30, 2017 on Penn Live.

Highland Township, Elk County, Pennsylvania – Marsha Buhl of Highland Township was placing Easter decorations at a local park on Wednesday when she first learned that the township she calls home — population 500 — was being sued by the state.

The action, brought by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Monday, claims local restrictions on fracking wastewater disposal wells violate state laws regulating the natural gas industry. There were two suits filed by the DEP, one naming Highland Township in Elk County as a defendant and the other naming Grant Township in Indiana County as defendant.

In both places, local attempts to curb proposed wastewater disposal wells have prompted lawsuits from the companies behind them and, in Highland Township’s case at least, a years-long legal saga that continues today with potential statewide implications.

And so, when Marsha Buhl heard about the latest legal filing, she dropped the brightly colored Easter Bunny cutouts in her arms, rolled her eyes as if to say “Here we go again,” and started talking.

“Apparently in the United States we aren’t really as free as we thought we were, because apparently the state doesn’t acknowledge that we have a right to clean water and clean air. That’s all we’re fighting for. … If you don’t have clean water, what do you have?”

Buhl belongs to Citizens Advocating a Clean and Healthy Environment, or CACHE, a local group opposed to a planned Seneca Resources Corp. disposal well near the township’s water supply in James City. James City sits at the northern edge of Highland Township, roughly two-and-a-half hours northeast of Pittsburgh, near the eastern limits of the Allegheny National Forest. It accounts for nearly half of the township’s total population. MORE