Who's Filing Local Zoning Challenges Against Southwestern Towns?

• 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.

Pennsylvania’s new Marcellus Shale law, Act 13, imposes restrictions on municipalities’ ability to zone and regulate drilling.
It did, that is, before Commonwealth Court deemed the provision unconstitutional. Local zoning restrictions are at the heart of a lawsuit the state Supreme Court will hear arguments on next month.
Until the court issues a ruling, however, the Public Utility Commission is accepting challenges to local restrictions. The Post-Gazette has tracked down the people who filed challenges against five southwestern communities, and found they all hold lease agreements with natural gas drillers:

In recent weeks, four of the five local municipalities engaged in a lawsuit against the PUC and other state agencies challenging Act 13 — the state’s sweeping new law governing Marcellus Shale operations and fees — have been under fire by local residents for their drilling ordinances.
The Post-Gazette obtained documents showing that each of those residents who challenged their local ordinances also holds a lease with prominent local drilling company Range Resources.
…Local officials say it’s no coincidence their municipalities are the ones being targeted by residents with leases. Each municipality except Peters has been challenged by a local resident.

 

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