Youngstown panel tries for 6th time to ban shale-gas development

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The third time wasn’t the charm. Neither was the fourth or fifth.

So members of the Youngstown Community Bill of Rights Committee are pinning their hopes that on the sixth try, residents vote to ban shale-gas development within the city limits.

Committee members announced Friday that they have collected the required number of signatures to place the proposed charter amendment on the November ballot.

The group plans a news conference at 1:30 p.m. Monday in front of city hall before delivering petitions to the clerk of city council.

“Greater numbers of people are becoming more fully informed, aware – and concerned as time goes on,” Susie Beiersdorfer, committee member, said in a news release. “I believe this response is related to the large body of newly released scientific studies that point to documented risks associated with shale-gas development. Increasingly, the citizens of Youngstown want to affirm their right to local self-government and local control over protecting their family’s and their community’s health, safety and well-being.”

Voters have rejected the charter amendment five times although the November 2015 failure was by a small percentage. Even if it is approved, though, enforcement is questionable.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in a February 2015 decision regarding a similar matter in Munroe Falls that the state constitution’s home-rule amendment doesn’t grant local governments the power to regulate oil and gas in their limits. That’s up to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Lynn Anderson, committee member, believes more people are voting in favor of the measure because they’re becoming better informed.

“They understand that the risks are too great when injection wells and other heavy industrial operations are permitted in residential or populated areas near homes, schools, parks, cemeteries, farms and even the protected Meander drinking water area,” she said in the news release.