Mark Ruffalo Speaks Out on Fracking

Action Needed to Stop SB 508: Bill Eliminates Laws That Ensure You Can Feel Safe and Enjoy Your Home

Last week we told you about SB 508, a bill that would take away citizens’ ability to bring “nuisance” suits against oil and gas drillers or others who engage in activities that harm their property values or interfere with the enjoyment and use of their property. If SB 508 passed, property owners would be left with no legal recourse to hold irresponsible drillers and frackers accountable for their actions.

On Friday, the bill was taken up by the Senate Judiciary Committee. During the committee meeting, members heard from Ritchie County landowner Jim Shreves about what it is like to live in an area of the state that is the heart of Marcellus Shale gas drilling. Jim, who is one of the hundreds of West Virgina residents who have filed nuisance suits against the oil and gas drillers, told the committee, “I couldn’t give my property away.”

After some discussion, the bill was sent to a subcommittee for further consideration. The subcommittee which is scheduled to meet on Tuesday, will make recommendations to the full Judiciary Committee as to what should happen with the bill.

Please continue to call, email and use social media to oppose this bill. If you’ve been personally affected, please share your story. Your stories matter!!!

Things you can do:

1) Keep calling your legislators and urge them to vote no on SB508;
2) Cut and paste the link below to your friends and family and urge them to take action on this horrible piece of legislation;
3) Get on Facebook and like the posts opposing SB508 (see below);
4) If your affected, we may need you to come to Charleston on short notice. If this bill passes the Senate we will need people to come and testify before the House of Delegates.

Here is the link to the WV Association for Justice (WVAJ) Facebook page with information on SB 508. Like it!

WVAJ has also created a page to easily to contact your legislators again and urge them to vote NO on SB508.

Here is our WV Surface Owners’ Rights Organization (WV SORO) action alert on SB 508.

Again, please, share these links with your friends, family, neighbors, and fellow West Virginians, and keep an eye out for more information on this bill later this week.

>>>Yours for Action, Team WV CAG

>>> West Virginia Citizen Action Group | 1500 Dixie Street |
Charleston, WV 25311 | 304.346.5891 | wvcag.org

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!