Communities fight frackers in court

Colorado:

In a state wracked with clashes over its explosive expansion of fracking, residents of Lafayette, Colorado just outside Boulder, have filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to prevent the state of Colorado, Gov. John Hickenlooper and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) from taking away the town’s right to ban the practice....

The plaintiffs are ... represented by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, a Pennsylvania-based group that provides affordable representation to communities clashing with deep-pockets corporations. CELDF executive director Thomas Linzey said of the Lafayette lawsuit:

“The right to local, community self-government serves as the foundation for the American system of law. Yet the people’s right to self-governance has been routinely ignored by our elected representatives and overridden by the courts in favor of corporate rights. This class action lawsuit is merely the first of many by people across the United States whose constitutional rights to self-govern are routinely violated by state governments working in concert with the corporations that they ostensibly regulate. The people of Lafayette will not stand idly by as their rights are negotiated away by oil and gas corporations, and by their state government.”

-- From “Colorado Town Sues State, Gov. Hickenlooper, and COGA to Protect Right to Ban Fracking,” by Anastasia Pantsios, at this August 21, 2014 EcoWatch site:http://ecowatch.com/2014/08/21/colorado-lawsuit-fracking/

Ohio:

In a dispute now before the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, a drilling company claims that Ohio House Bill 278, enacted in 2004, gives companies like itself more rights to pollute than the people of Broadview Heights have rights to protect their own environment and wellbeing:

“Just because something is law doesn’t mean it’s just or acceptable. There were laws that claimed women or blacks were property.

“The Declaration of Independence talks about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For most middle-class people, happiness is tied to their homes. If drilling devalues their homes, that is messing with their pursuit of happiness. Polluted air and soil violates people’s right to life.”

-- Tish O’Dell, Ohio resident and co-founder and director of Mothers Against Drilling In Our Neighborhoods, as quoted in “Energy companies challenge city bill of rights in court,” by Jon Huff, in the September 2014 BroadView Journal, published by ScripType Publishing, Richfield OH. The article is posted at this current Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund site:http://celdf.org/downloads/BroadView_Journal_September_2014_Energy_co_challenge_CBOR.pdf