May 23, 2016 3 min read

Range Resources – Appalachia is suing South Strabane Township over its handling of an application for a new well pad.

Range filed a lawsuit Friday in Washington County court challenging township officials’ reading of how state law applies to the company’s plans to drill on property it owns, known as the Munce site. The company also is asking the court to declare that approval the township previously granted for a well pad on that site is still valid.

Attorneys for the company, which is based in Fort Worth, Texas, argued in the complaint for declaratory judgment that the township must consider whether Range’s application – submitted March 28 – complies with the township’s existing zoning ordinance, which allows drilling in that area of the township. The township planning commission recommended denying the application during a meeting earlier this month because proposed changes to the zoning ordinance don’t allow for drilling on agricultural land, where the site is located.

A public hearing on Range’s conditional-use application is scheduled today before township supervisors.

Range spokesman Matt Pitzarella said the company remains “committed to working with the township to responsibly develop natural gas, including at the Munce location.

“Range is hopeful that the recent denial of the location by the township will be resolved quickly and cooperatively, which will be to the benefit of the community,” he said.

Township solicitor Jack Cambest and manager John Stickle couldn’t be reached for comment.

The lawsuit is the latest of several broadsides the driller has launched recently in county court over applications to build well pads in the township. Range and the township agreed in February to settle two lawsuits in which the company appealed supervisors’ denial of conditional-use applications to build two other well pads. The consent orders allow Range to drill at those sites with a number of conditions.

The newest lawsuit involves the state “pending ordinance doctrine,” a principle that allows municipal governments to deny land-use applications that comply with existing law but would violate changes to the law that are pending at the time the applications are submitted.

Range’s lawyers allege that officials incorrectly invoked the doctrine when the township planning commission recommended denying the more recent Munce well pad application based on the proposed zoning amendment, the sixth version of an oil and gas ordinance that officials have considered since 2011 but never enacted, according to the lawsuit.

That amendment would allow drilling only on land designated industrial. The Munce site is in an agricultural district.

Range contends that the township isn’t following state law by treating this amendment as a pending ordinance because officials didn’t advertise a public notice before the company filed its application on the morning of March 28.

A notice of intent to adopt the ordinance was published March 23, but supervisors didn’t vote to “ratify” that advertisement until a special meeting March 28, the lawsuit said.

Range got approval in 2010 to build a well pad at the Munce site, but hasn’t built one there. Township officials have said that approval expired because the company didn’t start building within one year of approval, according to the lawsuit. Range contends that it has until July 3, 2017, to build there.

The company also accused officials of acting in bad faith to prevent drilling in the township, called the proposed ordinance exclusionary and alleged that it “is thus legally invalid because, before taking into consideration other legal and environmental constraints, the sixth version of the Oil and Gas Amendment only permits oil and gas developments in, at most, 0.6 percent of the township.”