Jan 30, 2017 3 min read

Mt. Pleasant Township Zoning Hearing Board has wrapped up the months-long series of public meetings concerning a challenge to the township’s zoning ordinance brought by a statewide environmental group.

Dozens of people, many wearing neon yellow shirts emblazoned with “Land Owners United” – the name of an informal local group supportive of the natural gas industry – attended the proceeding, the ninth since the zoning hearing board began hearing testimony in the challenge Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future brought against the ordinance last year. PennFuture, as the group is known, argues in its challenge the ordinance, which allows oil and gas wells as conditional uses in all seven zoning disitrcts, violates the constitutional rights of members who live there.

The zoning hearing board plans to issue its determination by March 27.

Among the residents who testified in support of the existing ordinance during the proceeding Thursday was Paul Battista, a spokesman for the landowners group who said the conditional-use process under the current ordinance “gives the land owners, the neighbors, the producer and the township the right to look at each permit individually. And in doing so, we know the township is not giving the oil and gas industry a free pass to operate anywhere within the township.”

Township resident Eileen Steding said the dispute over the ordinance has divided the township, and she expressed concerns over existing zoning rules.

“I, too, am in favor of progress, but as I said before, if I wanted to live among well pads and compressor stations, I would have bought a house already zoned commercial/industrial,” said Steding.

She pointed to a well site where work began several months ago. “I’m just under two miles from the Yonker site, and I can hear the noise just fine.”

Washington County President Judge Katherine Emery denied an injunction in August PennFuture sought in Washington County Court that would have prevented township officials from acting on driller Range Resources’ conditional-use application to build a well pad while the challenge was pending before the zoning hearing board. The township approved Range’s application for the Yonker site in September.

Range and natural gas processor MarkWest intervened in the challenge on the side of the township.

PennFuture chief counsel George Jugovic Jr. wrote in the challenge township supervisors declared the ordinance substantively invalid in 2013 and never enacted a curative amendment.

The hearing last week included testimony by scientist Seth Shonkoff, a visiting scholar in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Berkeley, and executive director of the group PSE Healthy Energy, which “provides scientific information to help identify reasonable, healthy and sustainable energy options,” according to its website.

Shonkoff – who was called as a witness by Jugovic – said the “current weight of the body of evidence suggests that there are public health hazards, risks and potential impacts of oil and gas development, and decision-makers should take this into account when weighing where to locate shale gas development.”

About 90 percent of Mt. Pleasant residents have leases with Range, according to company spokesman Mark Windle.

“We look forward to the next steps in the legal process and appreciate that this proceeding allowed for the voices of so many township residents to be heard,” Windle said in an email. “Range and its employees are committed to working with the township and we continue to focus on the safe and responsible development of natural gas in partnership with our leaseholders.”