Corbett wasting more $ on fracking appeal, says envi protections must be killed if decision stands [View all]

[JPZenger]

http://marcellusmonitor.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/pa-puc-dep-seek-to-overturn-supreme-court-act-13-decision/

Recently, the PA. Supreme Court found that one of Corbett's crowning achievements was unconstitutional. This was Act 13 of 2012, which ordered municipalities to not regulate the fracking industry. For example, municipalities could not keep new wells out of highly residential areas, and had to allow other gas industry facilities in many locations. (It had already established that municipalities could not regulate operational matters that the State already regulated.)

Now, Corbett is using tax dollars to hire an outside law firm to try to convince the Supreme Court they were wrong. These reconsiderations almost always fail - I have only heard of one time it worked, and that was years ago when the Supreme Court did a major screwup on historic preservation. They do churn lots of fees for law firms.

Corbett's filing also says that the Court could not overturn the municipal pre-emption without also eliminating the additional environmental protections that were written into the law. For example, there are larger setbacks for wells from waterways.

Attyn. Gen. Kane was also sued by the municipalities as part of the original challenge, but she declined to defend the limits on municipal regulation of fracking.

What is also interesting is that some of the townships who are most affected by this law and who sued Corbett to overturn it involve very Republican suburbs.