After more than a year of resident, industry and agency dialog, Morgantown resolved its concerns about high-volume hydraulic fracturing on July 3 by passing a suite of ordinances regulating extractive industry in the city.
And, with that, it repealed its June 2011 ban on horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing.
"We've now enacted all the changes to create a zoning ordinance," said council member Bill Byrne, explaining his willingness to vote with the rest of council to repeal the ban that was passed with much ado when he was mayor.
The issue began in the spring of 2011, when city residents learned that Northeast Natural Energy of Charleston had been granted, without their knowledge, permits by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to drill Marcellus shale gas wells just upriver from the city's drinking water intake.
Several rancorous city council meetings later, the city banned, within a mile of its borders, the practice of horizontal drilling with hydraulic fracturing — the combination of practices used to extract gas from shale, which requires high volumes of fracturing fluids and which some feared could imperil the city's water supply.
NNE appealed, and Monongalia County Circuit Court quickly overturned the ban, saying regulation of oil and gas activity is the business of the state.
And so the city turned to zoning as a means to express its preferences about where and how such activity can take place.
It undertook an overhaul of the city's Planning and Zoning Code as it relates to extractive industry, heavy industry and heavy manufacturing.
As applied to extraction of gas from shale, the six ordinances passed on July 3 revise the zoning code are more restrictive than state regulations, a fact that city Director of Development Services Christopher Fletcher explained on presenting them to council in April by saying the state's rules are more rural in nature, whereas these are tailored to urban land use patterns.
The new rules allow extractive industry only in the city's six industrial districts. With setbacks of 625 feet from property boundaries — not structures — of residential areas and other protected uses such as churches and hospitals, 100 feet from a 100-year floodplain, 1,000 feet from the 100-year floodplain of the Monongahela River above the Morgantown Lock and Dam and 1,000 feet from the city water supply intake, that leaves only the Morgantown Airport property.
Other requirements include detailed site plans to be approved by the city and site conditions on landscaping, fencing and gating, parking and signage. And there are conditions on operation: security; noise, exhaust and dust control; secondary containment; spill reporting; flaring, including public notice; waste management and disposal; maintenance, clean-up and restoration.
The six ordinances were passed unanimously by a council that has been sharply divided over the past year on many issues.
West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association Executive Director Corky DeMarco has remarked as the new zoning rules progressed that anything more restrictive than the state's rules could be considered an illegal taking and that the industry may consider legal action.
The new rules may be read in the council's July 3 agenda (12.5 MB pdf, possibly not a permanent link).
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