As the number of gas wells in Pennsylvania grows each week, concern is mounting and citizens want to know how to stop the drilling and protect their community. On Saturday, June 11th, 2011, CELDF and the City of Pittsburgh co-sponsored a conference for local officials and community members across the state: Stopping Marcellus Shale Gas Drilling at the Municipal Level.

Citizens of Wagon Mound, New Mexico, failed to persuade their village council to enact an ordinance to elevate the village’s right of local self-government over the constitutional and property rights of corporate natural gas developers. A clear majority of resident speakers at the December 2010 council meeting supported the ordinance. Alarmist opposition from the village solicitor seemed to drive the council’s 2–1 vote to defeat the ordinance.

"Should the Pittsburgh Home Rule Charter be amended to add Section 104 ‘The City of Pittsburgh Bill of Rights,’ which enumerates the right to water, the rights of natural communities, the right to a sustainable energy future and the right to self-government, and which secures those rights by banning corporate gas extraction within the City and subordinating corporate rights to the rights of Pittsburgh residents?”

On July 20, 2011, the Borough Council of Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, by a unanimous vote, became the 4th community in Pennsylvania to adopt an ordinance that prohibits natural gas extraction.