Court restores local zoning rules for shale gas drillers in Pennsylvania
“An appeals court on Thursday curbed the state’s power over local zoning rules that target the growing gas-drilling industry but upheld parts of Pennsylvania’s revamped oil and gas laws involving notification of spills, eminent domain and medical records.
Commonwealth Court restored “the authority that local zoning boards and the Court of Common Pleas holds in reviewing zoning challenges,” said Bucks County attorney Jordan Yeager, who helped represent seven communities that sued the state. “Those are rules that every other industry and property owner must play by.”
The ruling clears up the final four disputed sections of Act 13 of 2012, which lawmakers passed in an attempt to standardize rules for drillers and the state Supreme Court trimmed back as overreaching.
“It gives us some definition of what we can do and what we can’t,” said Andrew Schrader, chairman of the supervisors in Cecil, one of the townships that sued. “We’ll be able to go ahead and write our ordinances.”
A spokesman for Gov. Tom Corbett’s Office of General Counsel said the ruling “speaks volumes to the constitutionality of state regulation of oil and gas activities.”
“We thank the court for their deliberation of the issues presented, and we look forward to continuing to make Pennsylvania the nation’s leader in promoting responsible, protective development of natural gas,” spokesman Joshua Maus said in an email.”
Conti, David. TribeLive 17 July 2014.