ERIE – A Western Pennsylvania energy provider is suing an Indiana County municipality in federal court for the second time, in order to reverse its law banning shale gas drilling waste injection wells.
Pennsylvania General Energy Company (PGE) of Warren filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania on Dec. 9 versus Grant Township of Indiana County and the Grant Township Board of Supervisors, of Marion Center.
In June 2014, Grant Township stopped being a Second Class Township under state law and adopted a Community Bill of Rights Ordinance (CBORO) that prohibited corporations from depositing waste from oil and gas extraction in the township, in order to prevent plaintiff PGE from operating an injection well there.
In a clear signal of how the fossil fuel industry feels about efforts to enact Rights of Nature protections that safeguard communities and the environment from the impacts of coal, gas, and oil development, an energy company has yet again filed a federal lawsuit challenging a local law in Grant Township, Pennsylvania.
This is the second time that Pennsylvania General Energy Company (PGE) has sued over the 2015 law, which aims to keep fracking waste injection wells out of the community of about 700 people.
Though the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) also previously sued the township, earlier this year in what