Towns win a round in court against unfettered fracking

Towns win a round in court against unfettered fracking by Daily News, Juy 31, 2012
TRY TO IMAGINE that you live in a nice suburban residential neighborhood and someone wants to open up an industrial chicken farm nearby — or maybe a fireworks factory or a steel mill. Surely, local zoning laws would not permit it, just as they would prohibit other commercial and industrial uses of residential areas. But Act 13, Pennsylvania’s giveaway to the fracking industry, would allow natural-gas drilling in nearly any neighborhood where drillers want to drill, including towns whose zoning does not allow it. And there would be nothing you — or the local leaders you elected to protect your quality of life — could do about it. … In a 4-3 decision, the court said the state did not have the right to strip local municipalities of zoning rights solely for the benefit of the hydraulic-fracturing industry — and only that industry. … We do not understand how Pennsylvania legislators of either party find it so easy to pass laws that ignore potential health and environmental hazards — as if their own health and that of their families and neighbors were somehow exempt from contamination and illness.