Grant Township has been ordered by a federal judge to pay Pennsylvania General Energy Company almost $103,000 in legal fees incurred when the gas company sued to challenge the constitutionality of the “Community Bill of Rights Ordinance” that the township adopted in 2014 to try to block an injection well for waste water from horizontal drilling.
The ruling, reported by the StateImpactPA website, was signed on Monday by U.S. District Judge Susan Baxter, who wrote that even after the ordinance was judged to be unconstitutional,
“Grant Township sought to make an end run around that judicial determination by amending its form of government and adopting…the constitutionally deficient provisions” and changing its form of government to a Home Rule Charter.
The ruling amounts to about $150 per township resident, with the judge noting that the gas company had offered to accept about one-sixth of the total of its legal bills.
StateImpactPA says the township has not decided yet whether or not to appeal. Grant Township is still facing a lawsuit filed by the state Department of Environmental Protection, which says it isn’t targeting the township but is seeking clarity from the courts on whether state law or home rule charters take precedence in cases such as this.
