Judge: No conflict in compressor ruling
The Washington County judge who upheld Cecil Township’s ruling to deny a natural gas compressor station there rejected the assertion that he should recuse himself from the case because of perceived conflicts of interest involving Marcellus Shale.
Washington County Judge John DiSalle said the township’s zoning board was correct in its assessment that the compressor station should not be permitted at the 71-acre industrial site near a residential area.
MarkWest and Range Resources are appealing DiSalle’s decision to the state Commonwealth Court, which forced the judge to explain his Jan. 21 ruling in a 14-page opinion.
The crux of rebuttal from the natural gas production companies is that DiSalle could not be impartial with his ruling since his wife, Diane, was involved with the Peters Township Marcellus Shale Awareness Group. Range previously asked DiSalle to recuse himself from similar litigation in Robinson Township because of the perceived conflicts.
However, DiSalle swatted away that assertion, calling the appeal’s reasoning “disingenuous at best” and adding that ruling on zoning board was appropriate. He added in his opinion that Range made a “belated challenge” to intervene in the matter when it appealed on Feb. 20, a day after MarkWest filed its intention to appeal the decision.
“It is apparent from this delay that Range Resource’s belated challenge to the lower Court’s ability to be impartial is nothing more than a bald attempt at forum shopping,” DiSalle wrote in his opinion on July 30.
Diane DiSalle was involved with the Marcellus Shale group that collected more than 2,400 signatures to have a referendum placed on the November 2011 ballot to amend Peters Township’s home rule charter. It would have prohibited gas drilling and related gas drilling activity, such as the installation of pipelines and compressor stations, but was defeated at the polls.
The legal wrangling with the Cecil Township compressor station goes back to March 31, 2011, when the municipality’s zoning board denied the application for a special exception because the facility did not have the “same general character” of permitted uses in that industrial area.
The facility would have included 35-foot structure with up to eight internal combustion stations and five to eight condensate and salt water tanks. The station would have operated continuously every day of the week.
DiSalle opined that the zoning board interpreted the township’s laws correctly and its ruling was appropriate.
“(The court) concluded that the (zoning hearing board) vigilantly considered all of the relevant evidence and used sound discretion in reaching the conclusion that MarkWest had failed to meet its burden to demonstrate that the proposed compressor facility was of the same general character of other permitted uses within (the industrial zone),” DiSalle wrote.
The appeal is now headed to Commonwealth Court to make a ruling on the case.