For Immediate Release: January 6th, 2011
MEDIA RELEASE
January 6, 2011
CONTACT: Ben Price, (717) 254-3233
benprice@celdf.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Thursday, January 6, 2011) Tonight, the Mayor of Mountain Lake Park in Garrett County, Maryland introduced Ordinance No. 2011-01 for a First Reading. The bill, titled Mountain Lake Park’s Community Protection from Natural Gas Extraction Ordinance, “establishes a Bill of Rights for Mountain Lake Park residents and removes legal powers from gas extraction corporations within the Town.”
At the heart of the Ordinance is this statement of law: “It shall be unlawful for any corporation to engage in the extraction of natural gas within the Town of Mountain Lake Park, with the exception of gas wells installed and operating at the time of enactment of this Ordinance.”
The bill also recognizes the right of the people to “a form of governance where they live which recognizes that all power is inherent in the people, that all free governments are founded on the people’s authority and consent, and that corporate entities and their directors and managers shall not enjoy special privileges or powers under the law which make community majorities subordinate to them.”
“Why are we doing this?” asked Mayor Leo Martin. “Our main duty is to protect the health and welfare of the town, and especially to protect our water.”
Also included in the ordinance is a local “bill of rights” that asserts legal protections for the right to water; the rights of natural communities; the right to local self-government, and the right of the people to enforce and protect these rights through their municipal government.
A public hearing on the Ordinance is scheduled for February 3rd, and a vote on passage of the Ordinance is scheduled for March 3rd.
The bill was modeled after the Ordinance adopted on November 16th of last year by the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and drafted by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. “If Pittsburgh can do it, we can do it,” said the Mayor, and he indicated that other Maryland municipalities should take a similar stand.
Energy corporations are setting up shop in communities in Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York, with plans to drill for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation. Corporate “land men” have busily signed-up property owners to contracts allowing wells to be erected. The prospect of paved-over green spaces, nights lit like airport runways, round-the-clock sounds of loud machinery, broken and pitted roads from the high volume truck traffic, the threat of toxic trespass by a cocktail of patented chemicals and escaping methane into the ground water, has alarmed neighbors and lease-holders alike, and they’ve begun to organize in opposition to the proposed drilling.
The gas extraction technique known as “fracking” has been cited as a threat to surface and ground water throughout the region, and has been blamed for fatal explosions, the contamination of drinking water, local streams, the air and soil. Collateral damage includes lost property value, ingestion of toxins by livestock, drying up of mortgage loans for prospective home buyers, and threatened loss of organic certification for farmers in the affected communities.
Ben Price, Projects Director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, applauded the Mayor for taking a stand on behalf of community rights. “The State says Maryland residents don’t have the right to decide whether or not they get fracked and that only the corporate-lobbied members of the legislature have the wisdom to decide how much harm should be legalized through state-issued permits. We don’t have a gas drilling problem. We have a democracy problem. Its symptoms are the State’s refusal to recognize the right to local, community self-government, and the issuance of permits to drilling corporations against the consent of the governed.”
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, headquartered in Chambersburg, has been working with people in Pennsylvania since 1995 to assert their fundamental rights to democratic local self-governance, and to enact laws which end destructive and rights-denying corporate action aided and abetted by state and federal governments.
Press Release: Mayor of Mountain Lake Park, Maryland Introduces Community Rights Ordinance That Bans Drilling for Natural Gas
pdf file: Full Text of the Ordinance
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
Pennsylvania Community Rights Network
P.O. Box 2016 Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 17201
www.celdf.org
Mayor of Mountain Lake Park, Maryland Introduces Community Rights Ordinance That Bans Drilling for Natural Gas
“Why are we doing this? Our main duty is to protect the health and welfare of the town, and especially to protect our water.”
– Mayor Leo Martin
MEDIA RELEASE
January 6, 2011
CONTACT: Ben Price, (717) 254-3233
benprice@celdf.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Thursday, January 6, 2011) Tonight, the Mayor of Mountain Lake Park in Garrett County, Maryland introduced Ordinance No. 2011-01 for a First Reading. The bill, titled Mountain Lake Park’s Community Protection from Natural Gas Extraction Ordinance, “establishes a Bill of Rights for Mountain Lake Park residents and removes legal powers from gas extraction corporations within the Town.”
At the heart of the Ordinance is this statement of law: “It shall be unlawful for any corporation to engage in the extraction of natural gas within the Town of Mountain Lake Park, with the exception of gas wells installed and operating at the time of enactment of this Ordinance.”
The bill also recognizes the right of the people to “a form of governance where they live which recognizes that all power is inherent in the people, that all free governments are founded on the people’s authority and consent, and that corporate entities and their directors and managers shall not enjoy special privileges or powers under the law which make community majorities subordinate to them.”
“Why are we doing this?” asked Mayor Leo Martin. “Our main duty is to protect the health and welfare of the town, and especially to protect our water.”
Also included in the ordinance is a local “bill of rights” that asserts legal protections for the right to water; the rights of natural communities; the right to local self-government, and the right of the people to enforce and protect these rights through their municipal government.
A public hearing on the Ordinance is scheduled for February 3rd, and a vote on passage of the Ordinance is scheduled for March 3rd.
The bill was modeled after the Ordinance adopted on November 16th of last year by the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and drafted by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. “If Pittsburgh can do it, we can do it,” said the Mayor, and he indicated that other Maryland municipalities should take a similar stand.
Energy corporations are setting up shop in communities in Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York, with plans to drill for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation. Corporate “land men” have busily signed-up property owners to contracts allowing wells to be erected. The prospect of paved-over green spaces, nights lit like airport runways, round-the-clock sounds of loud machinery, broken and pitted roads from the high volume truck traffic, the threat of toxic trespass by a cocktail of patented chemicals and escaping methane into the ground water, has alarmed neighbors and lease-holders alike, and they’ve begun to organize in opposition to the proposed drilling.
The gas extraction technique known as “fracking” has been cited as a threat to surface and ground water throughout the region, and has been blamed for fatal explosions, the contamination of drinking water, local streams, the air and soil. Collateral damage includes lost property value, ingestion of toxins by livestock, drying up of mortgage loans for prospective home buyers, and threatened loss of organic certification for farmers in the affected communities.
Ben Price, Projects Director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, applauded the Mayor for taking a stand on behalf of community rights. “The State says Maryland residents don’t have the right to decide whether or not they get fracked and that only the corporate-lobbied members of the legislature have the wisdom to decide how much harm should be legalized through state-issued permits. We don’t have a gas drilling problem. We have a democracy problem. Its symptoms are the State’s refusal to recognize the right to local, community self-government, and the issuance of permits to drilling corporations against the consent of the governed.”
The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, headquartered in Chambersburg, has been working with people in Pennsylvania since 1995 to assert their fundamental rights to democratic local self-governance, and to enact laws which end destructive and rights-denying corporate action aided and abetted by state and federal governments.
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