Sep 26, 2016 2 min read

The nonprofit environmental group Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future continued its zoning challenge in Mt. Pleasant Township Thursday, calling two witnesses to testify before the zoning hearing board.

PennFuture filed a motion in May challenging the township’s natural gas drilling ordinances – which allow the industrial activity in any zoned district through a conditional-use process – because the township never formally passed curative amendments to the ordinances after declaring them invalid in 2013. The hearing was continued to Oct. 20, and PennFuture plans to call more witnesses.

Dencil Backus, a former supervisor who testified in prior hearings, said he was willing to act on gas ordinances that holistically addressed gas and oil issues, not just water issues.

“We never received a formal recommendation from the planning commission. I would have happily considered a proposal that accounted for all aspects of drilling activity,” Backus said.

PennFuture attorney George Jugovic Jr. then called Dr. Edward Ketyer, a child development specialist with the Pediatric Alliance in Peters Township.

“Children are at higher risk from the effects of pollution. Their bodies are highly susceptible to toxic chemicals. Babies are being born in this country pre-polluted,” Ketyer said.

Attorneys for Range Resources challenged Ketyer’s testimony as biased and irrelevant to zoning issues, bringing up his pediatrics blog and editorials published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette slamming carbon fuel extraction as a key contributor to climate change.

Attorneys presented to him a 2011 study authored by Cardno ChemRisk that said a three-month air monitoring of two Range Resources drilling sites within a half-mile of Fort Cherry schools found no substantial air pollutants that would pose risk to human health.

Ketyer shot back, saying the study was not peer-reviewed and that various concentrations of different pollutants could affect people differently, depending on their age and overall health.