Apr 15, 2015 3 min read

South Strabane Township’s drilling ordinance is still a rough draft. The planning commission deliberated on the conditions attached to compressor stations, but it has not voted on which districts will be open to natural gas drilling in general.

In the meantime, the township is vulnerable, board of supervisors Chairman Jack Keisling said during Tuesday’s meeting.

“Things are happening that can happen within two or three months if we don’t do something about it,” Keisling said. “We can have compressor stations almost anywhere in the township if we’re not careful.”

Keisling asked the board to pass a curative amendment – a suggestion that was turned down a handful of times before, he noted. The amendment would declare portions of the existing ordinance invalid, which would place a temporary hold on its application until the board can pass a revised version.

While Supervisor Ed Mazur seconded the motion for a curative amendment for the sake of entertaining a vote, he and the two other supervisors in attendance voted against the motion. Keisling was the only supervisor who voted in favor.

A “clean, scrubbed” version of the ordinance is still in the works, though, said planning commission Chairman Fred Pozzuto. It could come before the board of supervisors for a vote as early as late May or early June.

Pozzuto said the hard part will be deciding where to allow drilling. In the existing ordinance, it is permitted in all zoning districts as a conditional use.

The planning commission wants to keep the conditional use process intact, but it’s considering a ban on drilling in residential zones, Pozzuto said. However, he noted that it’s difficult to ban it entirely because some residents own more than 50 acres of land, which is ample space for a well to be drilled without violating the proposed setback rules.

He said the board wants to increase the setback distance from 300 feet to 1,000 feet, which is measured from the well head to any occupied structure. The setback distance would be uniform, but officials could set more stringent conditions if the structure is a school, or if other unique circumstances arise, Pozzuto said.

The board also is debating how to mitigate noise and mandate the use of Marcellus Shale impoundments, but those facilities will be restricted if the state

Laynee Zipko, a member of both the board of supervisors and planning commission, said they want to restrict compressor stations to industrial districts only.

“Right now, we’re trying to incorporate everything from the public hearings and all of the ideas that the supervisors and the planners had and try to put it into one package and get it to the supervisors so that we can move forward,” she said.