Lest we get depressed with the recent decision handed down by Judge Yeager on the Middlesex Twp. zoning case, let's look at another struggle: the Civil Rights struggle of the '50's and '60's.

In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery (AL) bus. She was charged with disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. A 381-day boycott of the buses, a near bankrupting of the transit company, and a federal court decision saying such practices as segregated bus seats were unconstitutional didn't end the practice; it just made it illegal.

Although the 1954 Brown v Board of Education of Topeka decreed that segregated schools were unconstitutional, many schools remained segregated.  In 1957, 9 black teens had to be escorted by Army and National Guard troops to classes at Little Rock's Central High School -- the first black students to attend school there.  The troops were there to "maintain order and peace."

In 1960, four black students sat at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina and asked to be served. They were not. They were forced to leave when the store closed. A group of black students in Nashville, replicating the Greensboro event, were beaten by white teens and then arrested for disorderly conduct.

In 1961, black and white passengers were savagely beaten and imprisoned for riding together on buses from Washington, D.C. to cities in the Deep South in the Freedom Rides, designed to test the Supreme Court's ruling in Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which declared segregation in interstate bus and rail stations unconstitutional.

In 1962, after repeated failures to gain admittance to the University of Mississippi, James Merideth was admitted when a federal court ruled that the school could not bar a student based on race. It took 500 troops to allow him to enroll and he was continually harassed.

In 1963 Dr. King delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech in front of over 200,000 people in Washington, DC, but also in that year Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in Mississippi and four young girls were killed in a church bombing perpetrated by Ku Klux Klan members in Birmingham, Alabama.

The Civil Rights Act was passed and signed into law in 1964. It ended, at least in legal theory, the unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public.  Yet when it came to registering African-American voters, discrimination continued.

In 1965, following several peaceful voting rights demonstrations (including one in which Civil Rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson was murdered by a police officer in Marion, AL), a series of marches from Selma to Montgomery AL were initiated. The first attempt was brutally halted by state troopers and county possemen who attacked the unarmed marchers with billy clubs and tear gas. The news footage of "Bloody Sunday" galvanized the country and President Johnson announced that he was sending a voting rights bill to Congress, which later that year became the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

So what does all this long-suffering and brutality have to do with the Middlesex Twp. zoning case?  It offers us a powerful lesson: we will not lose unless we quit fighting.  This is true of the legal process and beyond.  In 2013 the PA Supreme Court ruled that Act 13 zoning is unconstitutional, stating that shale-gas drilling is an industrial use which is incompatible with residential zoning uses.  Yet township solicitors continue to ignore these admonitions, and now a county judge has done so as well.  And so this case will be appealed to the Commonwealth Court and ultimately the state Supreme Court.  We lose only if we quit fighting.

But it is equally true beyond the legal process.  Beyond the obvious abomination of a heavy industrial use placed in a formerly quiet residential neighborhood, there is the growing evidence that shale-gas drilling is an abomination to the planet -- to the air we breathe, the water we drink, to our children, pets and wildlife and to our climatological system that is growing more out of control by the month.  This abomination must be stopped.  

Despite laws being passed that were designed to help protect the rights of minorities, the Civil Rights movement had to keep implementing protests and demonstrations to bring the true spirit of those laws to fruition.  Our state and country may or may not pass laws to address the abomination of shale-gas drilling; it may be up to us to continue to draw attention to these hazards and keep them in the forefront of the public consciousness, just as Martin Luther King and other Civil Rights activists did with black rights issues in the '50's and '60's.  We can't give up until shale-gas drilling is banned everywhere on the planet in favor of clean and renewable energy.

Make no mistake: the shale-gas protest movement is very much a civil-rights movement: our right to clean air, pure water and a healthy environment for decades to come.  These rights were established by Pennsylvania's Environmental Rights Amendment -- Article I, Section 27 of the PA Constitution --  in 1970, and re-affirmed in the Robinson Township case of 2013.  Like the civil rights laws of the '50's and '60's, they are being ignored.  Like those brave activists and organizers, we must continue the fight.  We will not lose, unless we quit fighting.

-- Michael Bagdes-Canning

A statement given to the Butler Township commissioners.

This past weekend I read a letter to the Butler Eagle about drilling and zoning from Middlesex Twp. I found it very enlightening.

The writer spoke of the overturn of Act 13 that returned zoning powers to municipalities regarding natural gas drilling. That's certainly true. She spoke of the alleged majority of leaseholders in Middlesex that township supervisors were “listening to” in changing their ordinances to allow expanded drilling in the township. I thought: “Okay, that's probably what happened in Butler Township, too.” Lastly, she spoke of DEP's 500-ft. setback as being state law and that no further restrictions were required. I figured that was probably at least a part of Solicitor Lutz's assertion that Butler Twp.'s drilling ordinance is in compliance with state law...

But nowhere in that letter did I see any mention of the Environmental Rights Amendment – Article 1, Section 27 of the PA State Constitution, upon which much of the PA Supreme Court's ruling on Act 13 was based.

As I understand it, from people like Atty. Jordan Yeager and others who were closely associated with this case, the court ruling does indeed return zoning powers to municipalities with regard to shale gas drilling, and it also requires municipalities to zone for drilling in a way that upholds the constitutional protections guaranteed by the Environmental Rights Amendment.

What does that mean? Do you know? Has Penn State Extension been roaming the commonwealth explaining to municipalities how to be in compliance with the revised Act 13 and the Environmental Rights Amendment?

Maybe they have, but I doubt it. I do know that Jordan Yeager has written letters to at least four municipalities in Butler County attempting to explain to them their rights and responsibilities under Act 13 and the Environmental Rights Amendment.

For example, in his letter to Adams Township officials, Atty. Yeager states that an ordinance that allows drilling everywhere would violate the state constitution. Butler Twp. has just such an ordinance.

And in his letter to Butler Twp. officials, Atty. Yeager states that if the township were to change its ordinance so as to no longer allow drilling in all zoning districts, such action would be in compliance with the state constitution and Section 27, and therefore would nullify any charges of “unlawful taking” that the township might incur through such an action.

However, if the township were to persist in allowing drilling to occur in all zoning districts, including residential, Atty. Yeager states that the township would run a “significant and substantial risk” of a constitutional challenge from township residents. Notice that he does not say a “regulatory” challenge – he doesn't mention the drilling ordinance being in violation of DEP regulations – but a constitutional challenge. Four times he mentions this in his letter to the township, once even referring to it as a “Section 27 challenge.”

And, given Atty. Yeager's track record and familiarity with this particular law and this particular court ruling, I don't think he would be mentioning that if he didn't think that such a challenge had a very good chance of being successful...

Consider well, gentlemen. Consider well...

J.P.M.

  But it seems that people are starting to realize the full scope of this power grab.  In July the Commonwealth Court declared the zoning provision of act 13 unconstitutional. The PA Association of Township Supervisors has come out in opposition to the provision. So have over 65 local governments including four in Butler County.  When the PA Utility Commission (PUC) withheld close to $1,000,000 in impact fees in an apparent retaliation against the municipalities who challenged Act 13 in court, the Commonwealth Court again had to rein in big government by issuing a “cease and desist” order and declaring that the PUC has no authority to review local gas drilling ordinances.

The Corbett administration, the general assembly, and state agencies have overstepped their bounds time and time again by putting the profits of oil companies over the people and the laws of the Commonwealth and I for one am happy that the courts are rolling back their power grab.

J.M.B.