Clara Township Adopts Modified Ordinance Banning Injection Wells
Earlier this month, MDN told you about the long-festering issue of building a shale wastewater injection well in Clara Township in Potter County, PA (see EPA Approves Potter County, PA Injection Well, Waiting Now for DEP). It appears the state Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) is about to issue a permit for the well. The federal EPA has already signed off and approved the plan. However, the township is attempting to block the injection well by amending a previous ordinance. On March 31, the Clara Town Board passed an amended version of its 1987 ordinance governing injection wells. The newly amended ordinance bans all injection wells in the township–something that is (according to our understanding) illegal under Pennsylvania state law.
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For a moment, we thought we were reading an article in 
Last week MDN told you about the long-festering issue of building a shale wastewater injection well in Clara Township in Potter County, PA (see 
Since 2015 we’ve reported on the case of Grant Township (Indiana County, PA), a town that passed an ordinance cooked up by the radical Big Green group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well proposed by Pennsylvania General Energy (
An issue that’s been festering for more than two years appears to be coming to a head in western Potter County, PA. In early 2021, Roulette Oil and Gas applied for a Class II Injection Well Permit to drill an injection well in Clara Township. The leftists from Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) immediately began to whisper the siren song of “home rule” into the ears of Clara’s residents (see 
Yesterday at a Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Technical Advisory Board meeting, Kurt Klapkowski, Acting Deputy for Oil and Gas Management (part of the Dept. of Environmental Protection), told board members the DEP is about to file a letter of intent as early as this week to apply for “primacy” to regulate underground injection wells in the state. Currently, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the primary regulator of PA injection wells–including oil and gas injection wells. In some states with the necessary structure in place, the EPA delegates its authority to oversee and regulate such wells. PA wants to be one of those states. Me before you.
Since 2015 we’ve reported on the case of Grant Township (Indiana County, PA), a town that passed an ordinance cooked up by the radical Big Green group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) to try and block a state-approved injection well proposed by Pennsylvania General Energy (
Antero Midstream hired Veolia Water Technologies to build and operate a state-of-the-art frack wastewater recycling facility in Doddridge County, WV, which began operations in 2017 (see 
Pennsylvania State Senator Katie Muth’s attempt to block a proposed frack wastewater treatment plant in Dimock (hours away from her own district) has completely bombed out. Muth tried to challenge and block a permit for the plant, an effort which was mostly rejected in court back in June (see 
Here’s the latest ingenious way radicalized anti-fossil fuelers are attempting to cut off and strangle the Marcellus and Utica shale industry: Deny drillers any kind of means to dispose of the brine (naturally occurring water from the depths) that comes out of the borehole for years after a well is drilled. One of the best, most environmentally safe ways to dispose of brine is via injection wells. Antis are trying to strip Ohio’s right to regulate injection wells in the Buckeye State, hoping if the feds take over, many of those wells would get shut down.
Eureka Resources, which operates three frack wastewater treatment facilities in the Marcellus Shale, is doing really cool stuff. In October 2019, the company began extracting lithium from Marcellus wastewater at one of its plants in Bradford County, PA (see 