Delaware Riverkeeper: Maya Van Rossum

Letter by Michele Byers, USA Today (North-Jersey.com), November 22, 2017

As Americans, we have the right to free speech, the right to practice our religion of choice and the right to peaceably assemble. But what if we had the same constitutional right to pure water, clean air and a healthy environment?

That’s the premise of a new book by Delaware Riverkeeper Maya K. van Rossum, “The Green Amendment: Securing our Right to a Healthy Environment.”

The book argues that our best hope for protecting water, air, land and natural resources is to give all citizens — including those of future generations — the constitutional right to a clean environment. As riverkeeper, Maya works to protect the Delaware River and its watershed: 13,539 square miles spanning parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York. It’s a tough job made tougher by the fact that much of the watershed sits atop the Marcellus Shale, a formation rich in natural gas.

The book describes the terrible impacts of shale gas extraction through hydraulic fracturing: contaminated wells, polluted streams and wetlands, toxic air and damaged farms and communities. In 2012, the situation was made worse by Act 13, Pennsylvania legislation giving the shale gas industry the right to seize land by eminent domain.

Looking for a way to overturn Act 13, Maya and other activists turned to a 1971 amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution that explicitly protects the right of people to a healthy environment and establishes the government’s obligation to protect natural resources.

This amendment states, in part: “The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and aesthetic values of the environment.”

In December 2013, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court used this amendment to declare the fundamental provisions of Act 13 unconstitutional.

This convinced Maya that green constitutional amendments — “guaranteeing that the government has no more right to harm your environment than it does to deny you due process or overturn your right to free speech” — are a better way to protect water, air and land than legislation.

“Legislative environmentalism has had its day, and the environment is still on the brink of catastrophe — we need a new way forward,” she writes.

In the book’s foreword, actor and clean water activist Mark Ruffalo compares “The Green Amendment” to Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” credited with launching the modern environmental movement. “It is time to see a safe and clean environment not just as a preference or privilege, but as a fundamental right, to treat it with the same sanctity as the right of free speech,” Ruffalo wrote.

The vision of a Green Amendment can become a reality in New Jersey. Hopefully, that vision will be carried forward under Governor-elect Phil Murphy.

>>> Michele S. Byers, Far Hills, Nov. 22

NOTE: The writer is the executive director of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation.

From the Delaware Riverkeeper

Industry watchers accuse the Penna. judges of bias in this case

From an Article by Dan Zukowski, EcoWatch.com. September 30, 2016

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s controversial Act 13 is unconstitutional, calling it a special law that benefits the shale gas industry. The massive Marcellus Shale formation, which underlies a large area of Western Pennsylvania, provides more than 36 percent of the shale gas produced in the U.S.

The Pennsylvania State Legislature passed Act 13 in 2012 and it was almost immediately challenged by seven of the state’s municipalities along with the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and a private physician. The onerous law enabled natural gas companies to seize privately owned subsurface property through eminent domain, placed a gag order on health professionals to prevent them from getting information on drilling chemicals that could harm their patients, and limited notification of spills and leaks to public water suppliers, excluding owners of private wells that supply drinking water for 25 percent of Pennsylvania residents. Act 13 also pre-empted municipal zoning of oil and gas development.

“The decision is another historic vindication for the people’s constitutional rights,” stated Jordan Yeager, lead counsel on the case representing the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Bucks County municipalities on the case. “The court has made a clear declaration that the Pennsylvania legislature cannot enact special laws that benefit the fossil fuel industry and injure the rest of us.”

On Dec. 19, 2013, the state Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling on the grounds that the law violated the Environmental Rights Amendment of the Pennsylvania Constitution. That ruling returned local zoning rights to municipalities. It also ordered the state Commonwealth Court to reconsider other provisions. The ruling by the Supreme Court issued Wednesday addresses those rulings and should end the litigation.

The state Supreme Court held that the gag order and exclusion of private wells from notification were all unconstitutional. The ruling prohibits the state Public Utility Commission from having oversight on local ordinances and from withholding certain payments from municipalities that limit shale gas drilling.

In its ruling, the state Supreme Court wrote that the eminent domain provision of Act 13 “is unconstitutional on its face, as it grants a corporation the power of eminent domain to take private property for a private purpose, in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Sections 1 and 10 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.”

“A majority of our state legislators joined with the oil and gas industry in placing corporate desires and profits over the constitutional rights of Pennsylvania citizens,” said John Smith, the attorney who represented four Western Pennsylvania municipalities in the case. “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court correctly found that the constitution is not a document to be ignored.”

The gas industry appeared to shrug it off. “It’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things,” said energy attorney Michael Krancer, referring to the court’s decision. Krancer was secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection when the law was passed.

The industry-side Marcellus Drilling News pulled no punches in its reaction to the ruling. They called the plaintiffs “seven selfish towns” (twice in one paragraph) and blamed the ruling on “four left-wing Democrat judges.” But even they admitted that, for all practical purposes, Act 13 is now dead.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net