The following Letter to the Editor was in direct response to the Bradford, Pennsylvania newspaper's local news story titled "Highland Township’s Home Rule Charter Stripped by Court". Highland Township’s home rule charter that bans corporations from contaminating the public water supply may very well be “controversial” (according to this newspaper), but what is clearly much [...]
This article originally appeared in the Bradford Era on October 3, 2017. Highland Township’s controversial home rule charter has been stripped of its oil and gas provisions by a federal judge. … The saga over oil and gas rights in Highland Township has been ongoing for several years. In 2013, at the urging of Community [...]
A Press Release from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, from October 2, 2017. Rules Township Residents Must Accept Injection Well; Closes Courtroom Door to the People of Highland Township Last week, Magistrate Judge Susan Paradise Baxter issued a decision invalidating provisions of Highland Township’s Home Rule Charter, which protected the Township from frack wastewater. The [...]
This letter to the editor by Lisa Flynn originally appeared in The Daily Camera, September 28, 2017. Fracking was banned by the people, by vote, in Longmont. The ban was preempted by the state. Fracking was under moratorium until last May in Boulder County. The moratorium was lifted under threat of lawsuit by the Colorado attorney general. [...]
The suit’s backers say if corporations can hold legal protections like people, natural systems should, too. This article by Matt Smith originally appeared in Seeker, September 26, 2017. There’s an old saying in the arid American West: Whiskey’s for drinking — water’s for fighting. Now the perennial fights over the Colorado River, the biggest source [...]
This original article by Will Falk appeared in the San Diego Free Press, September 25, 2017. On Tuesday, September 26, the Colorado River will sue the State of Colorado in a first-in-the-nation lawsuit requesting that the United States District Court in Denver recognize the river’s rights of nature. These rights include the rights to exist, [...]
We The People have the right to protect ourselves. This original 29-minute interview with Paul Cienfuegos appeared on the Alliance for Democracy's Populist Dialogues TV show in Portland, Oregon on September 24, 2017. Community Rights organizer, Paul Cienfuegos, talks about the concept and history of community rights. Community Rights measures are characterized by three specific provisions [...]
This original article by Simon Davis-Cohen appeared in DeSmog on, September 24, 2017. Three years in a row, communities in Ohio have attempted to vote on initiatives that would grant them greater say over oil and gas development in their jurisdictions, but over and over again, appointed officials, some with direct ties to the fossil [...]
This letter to the editor by Terra Rafael originally appeared in the Daily Camera, September 1, 2017. We live in an oil and gas colony. We must admit the facts before we can address a problem properly. MORE...
This article by David Skolnick originally appeared on Vindy.com, August 11th, 2017. A vote from the Mahoning County Board of Elections to keep a Youngstown anti-fracking charter amendment off the Nov. 7 ballot isn’t going to happen for a few more weeks. MORE...
