Westmoreland County Township Speaks Out On Impact Fee Bills

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

November 9, 2011 | 11:35 AM

A Westmoreland County township doesn’t like language in HB 1950 “superseding and negating” local drilling ordinances. More from the Tribune-Review:

Upper Burrell is staunchly opposing state Marcellus shale bills that could supersede local drilling regulations.
Township supervisors Monday unanimously passed a resolution opposing “state intervention with local zoning regulations.”
The township opposes House Bill 1950 and Senate Bill 1100 which would, if adopted, take away powers given to municipalities to adopt a standardized zoning authority, the resolution states.
Supervisors chairman Ross Walker III said Upper Burrell spent nearly two years drafting its Marcellus shale ordinance.
“We have somebody at the state level trying to make decisions for us locally where the local people, the local officials are very familiar with the people, the ordinances, the zoning and the lay of the land,” Walker said. “Why take away the decision-making process from local and put it into the state? It doesn’t makes sense.”