Good evening.  Gentlemen of the board, I am here tonight to ask you to approve the amended oil and gas drilling ordinance that would replace what I often refer to as the "drill-anywhere" ordinance, adopted in 2012, that allows drilling in close proximity to densely populated residential neighborhoods in the township and was responsible for the forced approval of the Krendale well pad, which places hundreds of homes and businesses, health care facilities and Northwest Elementary School, a mile away, at considerable health and safety risk.

I have been concerned about shale-gas drilling for a little over four and a half years now, and now as then, one of my chief concerns is the health impacts associated with shale-gas drilling.  Impacts such as, but certainly not limited to:

• Study finds those living near shale wells more likely to be hospitalized -- University of PA and Columbia University, July 15, 2015.
• PA study links fracking to health hazards in fetuses, infants and young children -- Radiation and Public Health Project, July 26, 2015.
• Fracking industry wells associated with premature birth -- Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Oct. 8, 2015.

Gentlemen, these are not random, isolated reports, but rather part of a growing body of scientific research pointing toward the adverse health effects of shale-gas drilling.  In the press release for the aforementioned Johns Hopkins study, lead researcher Dr. Brian Schwarz, MD, states: “The first studies have all shown health impacts.  Policymakers need to consider findings like these in thinking about how they allow this industry to go forward.”

Gentlemen, you are the policymakers for Butler Twp.  Later on tonight you will be voting on an amended zoning ordinance that in part will determine where shale-gas well pads may be placed in relation to the township's residential neighborhoods.  The current "drill-anywhere" ordinance offers little if any protections to the thousands of township residents who live in our residential neighborhoods.  The amended ordinance, while not perfect, goes a long way toward providing those kinds of basic protections which residents have come to expect from zoning laws.  Perhaps more importantly, it would keep health-and-safety nightmares like the Krendale well pad from forced approval.

The PA Municipal Planning Code states that the primary purpose of zoning is to promote and protect the health, safety and welfare of the community.  As I mentioned earlier, you are the policymakers for the township.  If you do not take into consideration the mounting scientific evidence of health impacts associated with shale-gas drilling as you decide where this activity should take place in the township, that would be, quite frankly, unconscionable.

So please consider the health, safety and welfare of township residents tonight and vote to approve the amended drilling ordinance.  

​Thank you.

This amended Gas & Oil Ordinance represents a vast improvement over the township's previous drill-anywhere-you-like ordinance, and I would like to personally thank everyone who had a hand in drafting it. I wish it would have been drafted a little bit sooner, but... better late than never. Thank you.

Before I continue talking about oil and gas, I want to briefly mention the part of the Solar Energy Systems ordinance that does not allow solar panels on the fronts of houses. If the front of a house faces south, the optimal direction for the placement of solar panels, the language of this ordinance unfairly and unnecessarily discriminates against the homeowner by prohibiting him or her from installing solar panels where it makes the most sense to place them. I hope the commissioners will see fit to change that wording and allow solar panels on all sides of a structure.

Getting back to the drilling ordinance, it is a vast improvement, but it could be better. It still allows surface drilling on properties zoned R-2 Multifamily Residential. Granted, the 100-acre minimum requirement for a well-pad is a great improvement. The setbacks are... okay... But given that a PA Common Pleas Court judge last year struck down a well pad for being 3,000 ft. from a housing development, there is legal precedent for making your setbacks at least that distance, if not greater.

Or you could get surface drilling out of R-2 zones altogether. It's been stated that you're worried about state requirements for “reasonable access” to resources; yet the state, as in the state Supreme Court, in its rejection of Act 13 zoning, repeatedly stated that shale-gas drilling is an industrial use that is incompatible with residential land use. A number of legal actions across the state regarding residential drilling will soon be headed to the courts; depending on how the courts rule, local approval of residential drilling may be declared unconstitutional, and if you continue to permit drilling in R-2 zones you may have to change your ordinance yet again to be in compliance with that ruling.

Finally, I would remind the commissioners that, according to the PA Municipal Planning Code, the primary function of zoning is not to promote industry, nor to ensure the financial viability of private contracts entered into between landowners and corporations, but to promote and protect the health, safety and welfare of the community and its residents by placing compatible land uses together and keeping incompatible land uses separate.

In summary, this ordinance could be made a lot better, but even as it is, it is a GREAT improvement. I encourage you to tweak it and then approve it. Thank you. 

j.p.m.  

No doubt the board is aware of several legal actions taking place in western Pa. regarding zoning and shale-gas drilling, most of which involve drilling in areas zoned at least partially residential. What this means is that the opinions of Section 27 Alliance and the opinions of township leaseholders – the local “popular vote,” as it were – may not be as important to the township in amending its drilling ordinance as how the state courts may rule in these cases involving residential drilling.

Of course no one knows for sure how the courts will ultimately rule in these cases, but there are some legal points already in play that the township might do well to consider. I'd like to share with the board a few things I've learned about zoning from the lawyers trying these cases. Granted, my grasp of these concepts may not be perfectly clear, and these lawyers may not know what they're talking about, but for what it's worth, here's what I've learned.

I've learned that, according to the Municipal Planning Code, the primary function of zoning is to promote and protect the health, safety and welfare of the community. Zoning does this by placing compatible land uses together and keeping incompatible land uses separate. One of the more obvious examples of incompatible land uses are residential and industrial land uses – these must be kept separate.

There is some debate as to whether or not shale-gas drilling is an industrial use. An opinion which the township might want to consider is that of the PA State Supreme Court, which, in its ruling against Act 13 zoning, stated repeatedly that shale-gas drilling is an industrial use which is incompatible with residential land use. To this I would add that most of the well pad explosions I've read about have occurred on pads where the wells have already been drilled and fracked and are just “sitting there harmlessly,” which is the primary argument used when portraying shale-gas drilling as a non-industrial land use.

Finally, I have learned that it is not a function of zoning to ensure the financial viability of private contracts entered into between landowners and corporations – in other words, it is not a function of zoning to make sure that people get their money from their gas leases, especially if doing so violates the primary function of zoning to protect the health, safety and welfare of the community.

As I said, no one knows for sure how the courts will rule in these cases, but it seems likely that the courts will find that local ordinances which allow shale-gas drilling in residential zones are as unconstitutional as a state law which mandated that shale-gas drilling be allowed to occur in residential zones. But however the courts rule, a year or two down the road, if Butler Township's amended ordinance is not in compliance with that ruling, the township will have to undertake this ordinance amendment process all over again, and I keep hearing how expensive that process is. So I feel it would behoove the township to consider at least the potential ruling of the courts over local popular opinion in this matter of amending the township's drilling ordinance.


jpm

With regard to the Nov. 18 Butler Eagle article, Angry outburst gets speaker tossed out (see Media page), a few key points:

1. The e-mail mentioned in the article was not sent by me to the commissioners; it was an unauthorized sharing of a private e-mail, obviously sent via an unauthorized second, third or fourth party, which the commissioners chose to make public for their own purposes.
   
2. The phrase “extreme provocation” was taken entirely out of context in the article. Here is the entire quote: “I'm hoping to be able to keep the S27A folks reasonably restrained, even in the presence of such extreme provocation as the Marcellus Shale Coalition president.”  And with regard to Mr. Spigelmyer, all of us, even myself, were completely restrained.
3. The use of the word “crapload” in my private e-mail, as I explained to the commissioners at the meeting, was used in the typical slang fashion as meaning “a lot.” It was not a “bemoaning” of the fact that we would have to wait; it was merely letting people know that there would be a lot of agenda items and we would have to wait a good while before speaking. I explained to the commissioners that the use of this word was not to imply that the agenda items themselves were “crap” – indeed, they were not. None of that explanation was reported by the Eagle. If I had known that my private e-mail was going to be trotted out for public inspection by the commissioners and the Eagle, I certainly would have been more careful of my word choice.
4. Immediately before my statement to the commissioners during the public comment portion of the meeting I was subjected to a lengthy and varied personal attack by Comm. Joe Hasychak, of which the “crapload” complaint was only the beginning. This left me quite shaken and disassembled as I approached the podium to defend my private use of the word “crapload” and then proceeded with my prepared statement to the commissioners. This shaken state may perhaps explain, though by no means excuses, the indiscretion that would follow.
5. My use of the profanity “g-d” in reference to the township's drill-anywhere ordinance was not a part of my prepared statement to the commissioners, but came about as a result of a brief but heated exchange between myself and Comm. Dave Zarnick. The use of the word was regrettable; the reaction of township officials to the word was as though I had lunged at them with a knife. When it was suggested that I be escorted from the building, I accepted the invitation graciously and gratefully.
   
   

In summary, this whole incident was yet another example of the commissioners going to extreme lengths to divert attention from the fact that they have approved a shale gas drilling operation – the Krendale well pad – that is placed in dangerous proximity to a densely populated residential neighborhood.

Joseph

At the September 15, 2014 Butler Township commissioner’s meeting, representatives from Rex Energy made two distinct claims that stood out to me, which I decided to research further.  The first was that they were planning on drilling a maximum of 9 wells on the Krendale Golf Course well pad. Having been researching the fracking game since 2012, I did not trust what the drilling company said.  So when my eNotice email came from the Department of Environmental Protection a few days later, I noticed that Rex had applied for 11, not nine, drill-and-operate well permits on the Krendale pad.  The wells were labeled Krendale Unit 2H through 22HR on every even number. I visited the DEP website to verify this fact, and sure enough, there were 11 applications filed for well drilling on the Krendale pad. Wow, I said to myself. Rex lied to the township and to us. They also told the township planning commission the same thing on September 2nd.  Why weren’t they telling us the truth? I attempted to have this fact published in a letter to the editor in the Butler Eagle, but they did not print that part of the letter.  I also printed off and presented all 11 applications to the township commissioners at their October 20th meeting.

Another thing that I found hard to believe was Rex’s claim that they had no idea where the collection pipeline would be placed, even though such a pipeline is critical to the commercial success of a well.  So, into the Butler County Recorder of Deeds online database I went.  And lo and behold, I found five documents in which property owners signed right-of-way agreements with MarkWest, a Colorado-based pipeline company and the contractor for Rex’s pipelines.  The most recent document was dated July 10, 2014, over two months before the meeting at which they made that claim, and it was for the right-of-way on the Krendale property itself.  The pipeline runs along the eastern and northern edges of the golf course (conspicuously avoiding tee boxes by actually going around them), and then turns north off the property.  It passes through two private properties, crosses South Benbrook Road, and goes off down into Connoquenessing Township, ultimately to the Bluestone processing plant in Jackson Township.  I noticed something on the agreement documents for the two properties on the west side of Benbrook Road: they were both signed in November 2013, almost a year before Rex presented their plans to the township.  All of the agreements clearly identified the pipeline as the “Krendale to Bloom B Unit Collection Pipeline,” Bloom B being a well pad in Connoquenessing Township on Whitestown Road. Seems they did know where the pipeline was going after all. These agreements, and a map, were also presented to the commissioners at the October 20th meeting.

So again, Rex had lied to us. So much for being “good neighbors!” I guess this means that we shouldn't really trust these people...

– S.H.