Faced With a Fracking Giant, This Small Town Just Legalized Civil Disobedience
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A new first-in-the-nation law will shield residents from arrest as they use direct action to stop fracking-wastewater injection wells.
A tiny community sitting on a 27-square-mile piece of Western Pennsylvania wanted to send a big message to the energy company planning to deposit toxic fracking wastewater under its neighborhoods. And its 700 residents wanted it to be perfectly legal for them to loudly object.
Grant Township had seen what happens when people nationwide
take to the streets to protest bullying corporations: Arrests. Lots of them.
So Grant Township planned ahead. Two weeks ago, it passed a law that protects its residents from arrest if they protest Pennsylvania General Energy Company’s (PGE) creation of an injection well.
Residents believe this law is the first in the United States to legalize nonviolent civil disobedience against toxic wastewater injection wells. Township Supervisor Stacy Long said. “We’re doing it to safeguard the residents and protect as many people as possible,” she said.
Long said legalizing direct action is a response to the ongoing problem of rural residents seeing their voices excluded from discussions between state governments and big corporations on issues that have local ramifications.
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