Judge Rules Seneca May Challenge Injection Well Ban in Elk County
There is a new development in the case of an illegal ban on injection wells passed by Highland Township in Elk County, PA. In 2013 the radical leftist PA-based group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) convinced enough ignoramuses in Highland Township to pass a so-called Community Bill of Rights. Seneca Resources, a driller with leases and an active drilling program in Elk, had planned to drill an injection well on their own property to dispose of their own flowback and produced water. The CELDF-inspired ordinance Highland Twp prevented it, and Seneca threatened to sue the town (see Seneca Resources Threatens to Sue PA Town over Injection Well). Seneca made good and filed to sue, but the town and CELDF tried to prevent the lawsuit. Last week U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Paradise Baxter ruled that Seneca has standing to sue and the lawsuit will now go forward. By the way, in October of 2015, Judge Baxter ruled in an almost identical case in Grant Township (located in nearby Indiana County) that the town’s injection well ban was illegal (see Fed Judge Overturns Grant Twp, PA Ban on Injection Wells). Even the dullards who enacted the ban in Highland should be able to see the writing on the wall. They’re about to lose. Taxpayers in Highland who are footing the bill (since the CELDF doesn’t pay for legal fees and judgments) are the biggest losers. They may want to remember that come election time…
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Another environmentalist has tipped over the edge. The daughter of a landowner in Huntingdon County, PA scampered up a tree and planted herself there to prevent that tree and others near it from being cut down by crews clearing a path for the Mariner East 2 pipeline. Just two days ago we told you that Huntingdon County Common Pleas Judge George Zanic previously issued an order to Ellen Gerhart to allow tree clearing on three acres of her property (see 
It’s always sad when a pipeline company has to resort to eminent domain in order to install a pipeline through/under a property. Once the pipeline is there, you don’t even know it. Our observation is that pipeline companies bend over backwards to avoid sensitive areas and to reroute away from properties that don’t want it. Sometimes that’s not possible. It seems to us like reasonable people should be able to come to terms when it’s not possible to avoid having a pipeline installed. However, some people are not reasonable (able to be reasoned with)–that’s life. And that’s why eminent domain exists. A sad necessity. Such is the case with the Mariner East 2 pipeline being built by Sunoco Logistics Partners. Many landowners have signed agreements with Sunoco LP for Mariner East 2–but some have not. Those not granting permission have been sued using eminent domain, to allow Sunoco to clear trees and begin building. In almost every case Sunoco has won the eminent domain argument in court. The latest instance of victory for Sunoco comes in Huntingdon County, PA. Start the chainsaws! Today more trees are coming down in Huntingdon to make way for Mariner East 2…
Pennsylvania’s small, conventional oil and gas drillers have had enough of Gov. Tom Wolf and his Secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, John Quigley. Last week a trade association representing many of PA’s small, independent oil and gas drillers–the Pennsylvania Independent Petroleum Producers Association (PIPP)–filed a lawsuit against implementation of new rules and changes to existing rules known as Chapters 78 & 78a (see 
The Democrat commissioners of Fayette County, WV are scrambling to try and keep their jobs after enacting what is turning out to be a disastrous ordinance to ban all fracking, injection wells, drilling, etc. In January, three liberal Democrat county commissioners from Fayette County, WV, with the backing and help of the radical WV Mountain Party, voted to ban injection wells in the county (see 
Here’s what just happened. A family in Dimock, PA admits, under oath on the witness stand, that their water had too much methane in it BEFORE Cabot Oil & Gas began to drill nearby. The same family, the Elys, later built a 22-room, $1 million mansion on the same property AFTER they admit there was trouble with the water. And a jury decides to find Cabot at fault–and award that family $2.75 million. The other family got $1.49 million. That’s called brain-dead. A total miscarriage of justice–stupidity on the same level as the OJ Simpson jury. The AP has written a story trumpeting the verdict, and every liberal backwater newspaper across the continent is now carrying it. It makes no difference that Cabot has asked the judge to set aside the verdict–a very real possibility. It makes no difference that Cabot will appeal the verdict if the judge doesn’t set it aside (there was no evidence in the case!)–and will likely win such an appeal. The damage is now done in the court of public opinion. No-nothings will read the headline and say, “Yep, Josh Fox had it right in Gasland. That nasty gas driller polluted those poor people’s wells in Dimock. Jury said so.” Case closed. This is a dark day in our fight against fossil fuel haters and climate change radicals. They will regurgitate this verdict from now until long after we’re all dead…