Drilling/Fracking Related Activities Can Hurt You

There is Now a Dangerous Bill in the WV Legislature

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Retired Chemistry Professor and Resident Farmer, Lewis County, WV

Senate Bill 508, now in the Committees on the Judiciary of the West Virginia Legislature, introduced February 4, is a real stinker. It attempts to limit the common law definition of nuisance suit to fit the needs of the extraction industries.

Coal is a walking corpse, producing lots of money for a very few and a few jobs, is on the way down. Its waste condemns it to “least desirable” position among familiar fuels, and, in spite of what little regulation the State forces on it, converts thousands of acres of West Virginia to wasteland each year. At least three major coal companies are bankrupt.

Unconventional gas and oil drilling are wobbling like a drunken sailor. At best it is a “transition fuel” to renewable sources of energy, and money has been spent, and continues to be spent, like the sailor did while becoming drunk. People in the discovery and production end of the business enjoy bright hope, but have high cost of production, transportation and liquefaction, and ignore huge supplies near the big markets, Europe and China.

It is clear some of the state legislators want to reduce cost of extraction by transferring damage done by frackers and strippers to the rural folks living in and near these sacrifice zones. They can’t conceive of any way to improve life in West Virginia other than knuckling down to coal, oil and gas interests, and this new initiative is about the only advantage they can confer, since laws and enforcement are already so favorable to those interests.

That is the background for SB 508. What it does is to revise the definition of nuisance suit about out of existence. If you can meet the requirements of this bill, you would be able to make an ordinary damage suit, in most cases. The bill reads, in part “No person may bring an action for private nuisance unless proper evidence of physical property damage or bodily injury caused by the substantial and unreasonable interference exists.” So, witnesses don’t count. (You hillbillies aren’t reliable, even to judge your neighbor’s loss.)

Another noxious definition requires “…the activity involve(s) more than a slight inconvenience or petty annoyance and instead involve a real and appreciable invasion of that private use and enjoyment” (A little bit doesn’t count … how much is required?) The real kicker, though, is “For purposes of this section, an interference with the private use and enjoyment of another’s land is unreasonable when the gravity of the harm outweighs the social value of the activity alleged to cause the harm.” (Give up all hope ye who enter here.)
 How much “social value” does your life have, when it is contested by a corporation’s $500 an hour lawyers?

It goes on from that. It is clear the intent is to convert anyone with a WV state drilling & fracking permit to a lilywhite transgressor, with greased armor, that no claim can stick to. This thing needs to be stopped now!