Mount Pleasant Resident Withdraws Act 13 Zoning Challenge

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.

October 24, 2012 | 2:07 PM

A Mount Pleasant, Washington County resident is withdrawing his appeal of the community’s natural gas drilling ordinances. As the Post-Gazette reports, that means the Public Utility Commission will soon send the township its impact fee revenue.
The PUC has moved forward with zoning reviews, even as the state Supreme Court weighs whether or not to strike down the portion of Act 13 restricting local ordinances. More from the Post-Gazette:

Resident Tony Pawlosky had filed a request last month asking the state Public Utility Commission to review Mount Pleasant’s drilling ordinance.
Under the state’s new Marcellus Shale law, the commission must determine whether local rules conflict with state oversight of the gas industry. Those deemed out of compliance are ineligible to receive their share of annual state drilling impact fees.
In his request for review, Mr. Pawlosky said local provisions attempting to regulate setbacks and water impoundments were not permissible under the new state law.
But in a letter dated Oct. 17, he wrote that township officials have since become “willing to change their stance on drilling operations” and that he was rescinding his review request.