Democratic State Senators filed a motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit filed by Republican lawmakers, which challenges a ban on natural gas development in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
Protesters march around Philadelphia City Hall in 2012 during a shale-gas conference at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. MICHAEL BRYANT / Staff Photographer
By Andrew Maykuth, Philadelphia Inquirer
The Harrisburg political battle over fracking has shifted venues from the Pennsylvania State Capitol to the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.
A group of Democratic State Senators on Thursday filed a motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit filed by Republican lawmakers earlier this year that challenges a ban on natural gas development in the Delaware River Basin, in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The 16 Democratic senators said the Republicans lack standing to bring the suit and failed to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. “We argue that there are really no claims here,” Steve Miano, lawyer for the Democrats, said Thursday.
The Democratic lawmakers seemed particularly irked that the Republicans, in challenging the drilling ban, invoked Pennsylvania’s Environmental Rights Amendment of 1971 to support their arguments that the state legislature has authority over natural resources. The Republican’s interpretation of the ERA, a law championed by environmentalists, was “perverse,” the Democrats said.
State Sens. Gene Yaw (R., Lycoming) and Lisa Baker (R., Luzerne), the Pennsylvania Republican Caucus, and several local governments including Wayne and Carbon Counties filed suit to challenge a drilling moratorium imposed in 2010 by the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC), the interstate agency that manages water use in the vast Delaware watershed. The four-state agency upgraded the moratorium to a permanent fracking ban in February.
The court last month allowed the Democratic senators to intervene in the lawsuit — all but four of the state’s 20 Democratic senators signed on. Their filing on Thursday is similar to a motion filed last month by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, the environmental advocacy group that has also intervened in the lawsuit.
State Sen. Steve Santarsiero (D., Bucks) and other elected officials announced the motion at a news conference on Thursday. Montgomery and Bucks County officials are also seeking to intervene in the Democrats’ lawsuit.
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