Jarrett Out, Jugovic In as President & CEO of PennFuture
Stop the presses. Jan Jarrett, long-time President and CEO of PennFuture, has resigned her position. PennFuture is Pennsylvania’s largest environmental lobbying organization, and also a largely anti-drilling organization. Her departure is sudden and unexpected after leading the organization for the past 13 years.
Why the sudden departure? Jeanne Clarke, spokesperson for PennFuture says that Jarrett plans to take a “breather” and focus on her grandchildren. However, her departure may be related to trouble that cropped up last December over how a state grant was spent by the organization:
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A second court case decision in New York, this one in Middlefield (near Cooperstown) has ruled that local municipalities have the right to ban shale gas drilling within their borders. On Friday, Feb. 24 Acting Supreme Court Justice Donald F. Cerio, Jr. ruled that a previously passed drilling ban in the Town of Middlefield in Otsego County, NY is legal. A copy of the judge’s decision is embedded below. (Note: Thank you to an MDN reader for providing this exclusive copy of the decision that comes direct from the judge’s chambers.)
Yesterday, Tompkins County (NY) Supreme Court Judge Phillip Rumsey handed anti-drillers a first, and likely short-lived, victory. He ruled that the Town of Dryden, located near Ithaca, has the right to ban shale gas drilling. As with many legal issues, this one is complicated, so let’s take a look at the case, Judge Rumsey’s decision, and what happens next.
A group of 18 Tioga County, NY landowners have sued Inflection Energy to overturn Inflection’s “force majeure” claim to extend the lease on their collective 1,200 acres. A force majeure clause is written into most gas lease contracts. It means a driller can automatically extend the length of the lease if there are unforeseen events that hinder the terms of the contract—in this case commencement of drilling—from happening.
Last Friday, Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board Judge Bernard Labuskes, Jr. denied an appeal from 11 families in the Carter Road area of Dimock Township, PA who were asking that water shipments from Cabot Oil & Gas be restored. The 11 families, from an original group of 19 families, decided to not accept a remediation solution ordered by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that directed Cabot to pay the families up to twice the value of their homes and to install filtration systems that would remove all methane from their water supplies.
In the ongoing press event that is Dimock, PA, yesterday Gasland creator Josh Fox and actor Mark Rufalo, among others, gathered in Dimock to keep up the pressure and to continue to demagogue what has really happened in Dimock. See MDN’s