business but it affects the entire community throughout the state are you folks have led the fight on this issue dealing with zoning and gas drilling and things like that as far as the supreme court of pennsylvania ok  let's let's look at some of the topics we're going to be dealing with today the constitutional rights of the people what they have the property rights of police powers zoning i mean there are so many topics that can be covered under this and we're just go and how you know how it affects us in our township so we thought this morning we'd like to try and explain what zoning is and where it comes from and how municipalities need to deal  brian and i are going to try and start at the beginning and start with the constitutional basis of zoning so you want to start whenever i feel the first thing we need to understand is our constitutional rights as enumerated in the constitution and i think everybody samoa with the rights that we do have freedom of speech freedom of religion we do have property rights under the pennsylvania constitution but along with those rights comes limitations and a couple examples that you're probably familiar with your right of free speech you've heard example you can't yell fire in a crowded building you can't exercise your right of free speech to the detriment of your fellow citizens so all those feel rights that we share as americans have limitations and those limitations are defined at a threshold which they would infringe on our fellow citizens constitutional rights that's where property rights come into play pennsylvania constitution really says that we have four different things associated with our property rights we have the right to acquire property possess property defend our and we have the right to derive happiness from the use of our property so as long as those rights are exercised in a way that do not infringe on our neighbors rights they're perfectly constitutional when we get into zoning and we talk about zoning which zoning does is to for it protects our property rights from our neighbors infringement on those rights and it limits our rights so that we can't infringe on our neighbor's property rights that's really the discussion that really is what the act thirteen challenge was all about well if i understand correctly how the state was trying to push through things saying basically you could have drilling anywhere is that painting with a we're really wide brush here that's that's correct with the state did in what our argument really was an act thirteen it's very misunderstood is the state was engaged in unconstitutional zoning they were forcing industrial uses and every zoning district there by they were infringing on the property rights of pennsylvania it's that  d a right to have their property protected from infringement by their neighbors so that was the argument it's somewhat misunderstood but the or you meant was the governor and the state legislature had passed acts thirteen which was basically an unconstitutional use of zoning powers you know we don't really think about zoning too much until i travel a lot and i was not in kentucky a couple weeks ago and you're driving through the state of kentucky and you see a gas station next to a you know five hundred thousand dollar home and then you see a farm next to it next to a drawing pad next to it i mean this is the whole street is talking about mixed use i mean it was it was a store it was a a residential community you know it's not it's not heavily industrialized and but they were trying to do is say basically these guys have the rights as a utility to go and do whatever they want to do that wasn't so much they were claiming to be totally but there were there were fourteen things that we challenge in fact for thirteen there were at the at the base apologies it would have said basically that our zoning laws were of no importance that they were basically thrown out all of our planning would have been for naught it would have said that  our you know comprehensive plans meant nothing because you know we could say this is how we want our community to develop this is how we see the land uses in our township but if somebody can come in and say ok i want drilling in this area poof there it goes so the first issue was designing how do we you know can we put an industrial operation in a residential area and if you go back to substantive due process of article one section one of our constitution it says that the basis of zoning is that you have to put compatible uses in  districts the basis of zoning is that you divide your municipal area into districts or zones and in each of those loans you you put like uses the reason you put like uses in each of those loans is so that what you do with those uses is consistent with other people who have similar interests and uses and you don't infringe on the enjoyment or the use of that property by other people as district if for example i buy property under the understanding that it's residential and i build a house i have an expectation the law that my property is residential and that i'm going to be able to enjoy my residential property if somebody comes along and builds a gas station for example next door to me they're infringing on my rights my enjoyment of my property so if somebody is going to build a you know an industrial operation and take to gas drilling out of it make it a cement plant you know if they want to put that in my residential area it's you know it's it doesn't belong there so what we what we went to court to say was that as the law states and this is this isn't a new law that we were we were arguing this is goes back into the beginning of the one thousand nine hundred says that like uses belong in concise statement that said yes industrial uses belong in industrial areas he said a number of other things that that was appealed then to the supreme court we went to the supreme court it was argued again in the supreme court and they said yes that's right industrial uses belong in industrial areas the supreme court however went further and and gave a very eloquent definition of article one section twenty seven of the constitution which is the environmental rights amendment and the environmental rights amendment said that pennsylvanians have the right to clean air clean water and a healthy environment and that was a new interpretation and i don't think we really have time to get into that there's more that's a major program could be a whole nother discussion but we like to confine our discussion to zoning but you will hear people say that well it was just a decision doesn't mean anything and that's not true the three justices found that section thirty three zero four of act thirteen which was those zoning issue was unconstitutional based on section twenty seven justice bear found it unconstitutional based on article one of the zoning but it was still four to two which is a majority decision the fact that they found it unconstitutional for different reasons  has nothing to do with it they still upheld the commonwealth court decision which was based on so it was stricken it's unconstitutional and basically see end of that discussion well let me ask you a question which i think everybody's interested  the state was slapped basically they got their hands slapped in the commonwealth court why would they ever appealing wow i mean what was the what was their what was their what were they trying to do i mean were they just trying to give a free pass to anybody who wants to do anything in the in the commonweal i i think there's a lack of understanding by a lot of our legislators that governor at the time and even a lot of our local elected officials they believe this is a policy choice and what they don't understand is they cannot operate outside the bonds of the constitution they do not understand because a lot of the argument that they put forth was we have a right as a state legislature being to saw over and over the municipalities because municipalities are creatures of the state they were they were put in place by the state they have certain powers and the state assumed that they they can do anything that they had wanted what we said is wait a minute you can do certain things but zoning in constitutional rights are not policy decisions you are limited your hands are tied by the constitution that's where they ran afoul of the constitution and i can tell you i don't believe they really understood our position for a long time way past the commonwealth courts and so we got into the supreme court and even today a lot of local officials do not understand that they do not have the power to do something unconstitutional it's amazing that governments either federal or state don't seem to understand that the constitution is there to protect the people from the government and so that's not he said as a social studies teacher i'm always amazed by that because of the fact that the document is not there to protect the government it is there to protect the people this is this is why we really wanted to to have this discussion today is to try and and tie the tie in people's minds the fact that zoning is a constitutional issue it's not a it's not a choice it's not a policy discussion it's not something that either a local government or a state government or even a federal government can change the only people that can change the constitution are we the people and so there is nothing in there's nothing in law that says that you can ignore or you know you serve a constitutional right and  and as brian said there i really believe that when we first challenge this that thirteen they assumed it was going to be on the grounds of preemption which he said that the state has the right to preempt arguments that they in commonwealth court they didn't respond to we were talking one thing they were talking another thing and so they they didn't they just didn't respond to them well if you muddy the water enough you just can't see through it so no it's but but what 's what's happening on a local basis right now as we get into other townships other municipalities is that they're solicitors they're zoning hearing boards their supervisors their councils still think at least if you look at the decisions they're making they still seem to think that they have the right to do whatever they want to do i hear frequently well didn't the supreme court say that we have the right to zone as we see fit and the answer to that is yes and no yes you have the right to zone that's true that's what the court said as you see fit now you have to you have to do it in a constitutional legal matter and so what's happening is that people are doing things like they're saying well we have a residential area but because it's it's a big error area we can put an industrial operation in the middle of that area and it it won't bother anybody therefore it's ok and it's not ok they're saying that if we put it in the middle of a you know a big wide open area and we require them to put sound walls around it and we were choir that you know they do this and that and put all these conditions on it that makes it ok it makes it compatible no it doesn't it's still an industrial operation you cannot do that well let's look at the one of the topics of the paperwork here is limitation on rights of use of property the police powers and we're not talking about the police we're talking about the government's powers so let's discuss that a little bit police powers in the way in which government limits a constitutional power a police power otherwise known as a limited police power because it has limitations that are stablished by the legislature if you have a constitutional right for example to drive your car i mean to travel to you know whatever your free speech was the example that brian gave earlier you have the right to free speech the government exercises police power in the sense that you cannot use that right if it in if it can endanger other people you cannot go into a theater and yell fire that's against the law so that's a police power in the case of zoning a limited police power is  that we are legally able to create zoning districts we can create zoning ordinances and when we create zoning districts we can say that typically zoning districts are residential commercial industrial agricultural and some subcategories of and within those districts we can specify what types of buildings for example can be built how high they can be what uses what you know what types of uses can be made of those areas we can specify all of those things within certain bounds and we can say for example in a commercial district that in this type of a commercial district you can have uses that are low intensity uses that have you know for example not a lot of traffic because of other certain conditions in the area in a residential district you have to have so much property you have to have so much setback but all of these things are only legal if they promote the general health safety and welfare of the community in general and it's in general that is the important part there  you can't you cannot create as owning law or any other type of law to the benefit of one individual or one industry it has to be the community in general and that's where a lot of ordinances run afoul of constitutional rights we know the legislature if you're in harrisburg and you go fifteen miles outside of harrisburg you're basically agricultural area so whenever you're sitting there making laws and that's what you're used to seeing every day while you're driving around the local community it might make sense that why can't they just do it here you know and but i still have a hard time i know that they had an issue in pittsburgh where they were trying to put it  schools in the parks and everything else and there are some ramifications i mean whenever you're drilling you know you do throw things out into the atmosphere that aren't capable of being controlled the rams the radioactive materials i mean we have radon through the entire state so when you start drilling down in these dots come up well then you know i said we have i was mentioned earlier we have no plans right here in the community that are next to areas that could be considered or developed for drilling purposes well you know those homeowners if they were made aware that that would be the case whenever they bought the property they'd probably think twice about it so i mean i say that we have we have issues even though we have a large still agricultural districts in peter for example and by the airport they have a two you know you go up past the airport and there's tons and tons and tons of acres that are just woods but you know so that that may seem right out there but whenever you bring it into a residential community we have an issue where you brought up a good point because that goes to another constitutional right and that's equal protection under the law i actually was asked a question by an editorial board which was a very good question and it along the same lines as what you were just saying if you have a large rural residential area for example and somebody had five hundred acres could you allow that industrial use to be put in the middle of those five hundred acres and say they had highway access so that neighbors would be affected nobody would know it was there and it could be essentially hidden from the rest of that zoning district the problem with that is say another property owner net same zoning district rural residential had five acres and he came to his municipal government said you know what i want to put an adult bookstore on my five acres and i can hide it on my five acres and nobody would know it was there you see that's the problem you have to extend the same right to the person with five acres as you extend the first one to five hundred acres that is what keeps the zoning constitutional equal treatment under the law so everybody in the same zoning district has to be treated equally if they're not treated equally then the district itself becomes unconstitutional that's the problem with allowing or hiding uses in a district that's how it works in order to do what you want to do in the airports a good example those are industrial areas you have to re those to industrial areas then you could do that then people have an expectation if they were to look at a piece of property say to buy their own at real estate sign it would say zoning and it would save zone industrial they would know what would be allowed in that district layers of marcellus shell and things like that that have in fact brought this to the attention really you know this was like we've been honeypot everybody was going to get rich because of it and now it's on the it's waning because of the prices and everything else that has no play in what you folks have been finding bought though the idea that the price is going up or don we can make money is not the issue here the price the issue is the use of the land that they want to try to make money from yes and dave and i are not anti drilling and we're not environmentalist we believe in the constitution we believe in a system of government and i think judge pelligrini at the commonwealth court level said it best are we willing to throw out the constitution for a few jobs and that's exactly what dave and i have been preaching something that i think was misunderstood to about act thirteen and anybody involved in any type of real estate would understand there was no density restrictions on these industrial operations and the case of drilling a given example development or commercial development say in a commercial development you may need to have a minimum of a four acre building had nothing smaller would be allowed and one building prepared but in the case of drilling and x thirteen there was no density restrictions you could literally have a well and two hundred feet away another well and another well in another well so there were no restrictions on that in any of the zoning districts in pennsylvania and to take it a step further the areas where shale gas is present and drilling is going on if those people were subjected to industrial uses  that means the rest of the state is subjected to it but they don't have shield gas so we get back to the problem of equal treatment under the law with our constitution again yeah it's my father used to tell me when i was growing up there's two things you don't want to see made one a sausage and the other one is the laws and in this case lays ahead having been involved in the state party higher level i found that that is really the case and usually it's follow the money and you'll find out why the laws being skewed one way or the other and it's a sad state of affairs but let's go into why zoning works  ok what exactly is the is the purpose for zoning we talked about it but you know i know why you and you did hit on it so i mean i you said if you feel that you've done enough on that them we'll go on to one of the other decision or discussion  in summary really zoning works because it provides order it provides predictability it when you when anybody buys property you buy property was certain reliance on what your property is today and what it will be tomorrow and if you're going to whether it's a business or your residential property you buy that property you invest in your future and you say it's going to be a residential property or it could be a business and my rights are not going to be you know trampled by somebody else your expectation expectations are going to be going to be accessed and they're going to be consistently looking for the future possibly to have your kids kids stay raising is not as versus having it all of a sudden or a superstore next to somebody and from a township perspective of municipality perspective you you have to look forward many years in a township and  say you have to plan for sewers and water and oil and roads and all the things as a township grows so you have to be able to predict where growth will be how growth will occur and be able to say that this will be a direction  residential growth this will be where we're going to have commercial growth this will be our projected revenues from you know from residential and commercial development and not have that all of the sudden grand disrupted by by some outside event because when an industrial use be it drilling or anything else occurs it just takes out residential growth for example if if an area it is drilled there will be no residential development i mean look at a place like mount pleasant township as i think is a good example a lot of gas drilling has occurred there and i can't imagine there will ever be residential development in that place and where where it where where industrial development gastro in for example has taken place there is growing documentation that property values decrease so where somebody has bought property or developed property in reliance on the value of that property if somebody performs an operation like  operation that will in the future diminish the value of their property they've been harmed well as i mentioned earlier a real state broker and in fact whenever this all started you know people were selling leases their rights under the under their property and then all of a sudden whenever they want to sell their property the lending institutions were saying whoa you know you've you've changed what you had it's no longer residential you actually have an industrial operation on that property so therefore we can't give you you know then the new buyer can't get a mortgage for the house and as you say you know it diminishes your ability to sell but you've taken the action to diminish that ability stroke and no family suffers a tragedy of all  of the best minds in america are doing more than a match of the american dream foundation seeking to find cures for life without brain disease isn't just something we can imagine something we can talked about what act thirteen was and the actions taken up to the supreme court to be able to in fact countermand what the state was trying to push through let's look at some of the misunderstandings that people have  and misapplied as you have here misapplied process let's look at that and the substantive due process well i think it would be probably a good idea at this point to look at what's going on around us a we were really really happy when we got the act thirteen ruling it was a great decision and i know all of us that were involved in it came back from hearing a decision and said wow you know we got a great rolling so we're you know we're us and said you know how they apply it you know how have they taken this ruling and put it to use i would say that up to this point there have been many townships that probably simply don't understand what the ruling said the supreme court decision was one hundred sixty two pages it was a very closely reasoned ruling eloquent but it was  hundred sixty two pages so many many people i think don't understand that many elected officials don't understand what it said even many of the township solicitors the lawyers don't understand what it said  they heard what they wanted to hear they heard that we have the right to own and they didn't read any further so they they have taken that to mean that zoning is a is a policy decision they don't as we said in the first part of the discussion haven't connected it to being a constitutional issue but probably more worrying is the fact that apparently some of the judicial still seem to feel that it's a it's a policy decision as you can you can do what you want to do what you say that's what we're seeing i mean what we're what we've seen is a series of very baffling actions on the part of the townships very clearly the court said that gas drilling is an example is an investor will use it it belongs in industrial area it does not belong in a residential area but even around here we see it being put in residential areas when you ask people why they say well there's no reason not to you ask them why it's being put in residential areas i say well you know the it's money i mean people people want the money from the drilling we hear from from residents that you know well it's it's my gas it's my money i have the right to get it therefore i wanted it's not going to hurt anybody and all of that is not true so we were seeing that and so for us for people who are involved in this is what are how what is our next step you know where where do we go from here you know how do we how do we educate people how do we educate governments how do we educate in fact judges and lawyers what with this decision said that that's what's that's what's going on right now and i think dave and i have both tried to remind a lot of the elected officials that we've talked to and lawyers that you know we took an oath of office when dave and i were elected  as elected officials in our local communities we took an oath to up hold defend the constitution the united states in the commonwealth of pennsylvania that's it that's our primary responsibility and we try to remind people of that because that constitutional duty is first and foremost in fact in the supreme court decision act thirteen supreme court decision just disc steel clearly stated that these are not policy decisions these are constitutional duties and  often get asked the questions well don't the voters get to elect who they want to represent them at the local level for example or at the state level and i say yes but as an example say the voters elect consul people  supervisors in a community and as i think everybody's aware there's a serious heroin problem in southwestern pennsylvania and that cuts will decides well to combat that problem what we're going to do is we're going to pass an ordinance local law to allow the police to do random searches in our neighborhoods go door to door go into these homes just look through people's homes now clearly that's unconstitutional and everybody would say you can't do that that's unconstitutional the consul can't do that the same applies with zoning the same applies with due process they are restrained by the constitution it's just that with some time when there's money involved people want to bend the rules or bend the constitution and we try to remind them that they can't do that there are limitations well as well as we talked earlier while we were on break after the boston bombing the police were going in the hoss's without search warrants down in new orleans whenever they had the flooding during katrina they were taking guns from people illegally and this was the local government those of the local police and so i said and one of them as a social studies teacher and i'm sitting here screaming at my kids never give up you're right most of them in the classroom said but they're looking for the guy or these guns make bone to the hand i said they're in the hands of legal owners and they're being taken away so our government overreaches are overstepped their bounds all the time now i you know and  sort of understand that if you're on the in the sticks and you know people have been on the council doing their thing for thirty years because of the fact no one else wants to get on it and the solicitor that they have was a part time solicitor shows up at the meeting once in a while i could understand maybe they don't know the legal implications of this nor do they want to really change their ideas or ways of thinking of they've always well you know john put his garage up there and it was next to his house so why isn't that ok that kind of thing but then when you get closer into the city and you have the attorneys there at your meetings all the time and of supposedly involved in governmental law you know why is that why is there such a misunderstanding of what seems to be black and white well i think that people conflate some firings there's townships are governed by what's known as a municipality is planning code that's a state law apologies and how they operate there is one section in the municipality is planning code which which deals was holding and there's one section which is about a sentence long in there section six o three and that that municipalities must provide for mineral extraction that's what it says it's section i which which means that there's an a b c d if cheat in front of it so there's lots of other things though that must be also provided for and so people look at that and say well you you must provide for mineral extraction gastro and so you know you can't stop it you have to provide for it in your community someplace well first of all that's almost exactly the same thing as section thirty three zero four in thirteen which was declared unconstitutional and i have a suspicion that if if and when that section is ever a litigator to what we found unconstitutional because what it what it does is legislatively proposes to override the constitution and the constitution as we've discussed several times here says that you have to put like uses in zoning districts and you can't you can't override the constitution legislatively so one it fells out on that basis but also if you look at all the other things that the municipality planning code says you have to do some of them are mutually exclusive so you say ok if you have to do this then you can't do this but if you do that then you can't do this so why do you take one of them out of context so it's you know on that basis of there i think a lot of that that's where a lot of people get confused on this but the other thing is i think a lot of the a lot of people who who are doing some of these things that are illegal are unconstitutional do so not out of malice but they do it because they don't they don't understand what what really certain things  particular district and you wish to restrict that use in some manner the the case of a conditional use the governing body which would be the council of the supervisors can apply additional conditions to approval of a particular application for example i i have a in a commercial district i have a i want to put a meeting place a restaurant in there so i go to the council  i say i want to put a restaurant in here but it's it's it's not a permitted use it's a conditional use and the council says ok you can do that but you have to add a  retaining wall and ten more parking places because there's going to be a lot more people here those are additional conditions you can't you can't make something ok with a conditional use and change the underlying zoning district so how does that affect our gas drilling issue some people seem to feel that you have a residential district which does not allow i ts stated uses and every district has stated uses it doesn't allow gas drilling for example but they feel well we'll put gas drilling in there but i'm going to require that it have sound walls that have you know particular set backs that have you know particular types of you know other protections for people and if i put all of these conditions on it somehow or other that makes it ok and it doesn't a conditional use does not and cannot change the underlying conditions of the district a conditional use has to be permitted use in a district has to be at one of the listed use is not a permit it is but has to be one of the one of the uses listed in a district likewise a special exception which is something that they that would go to a variance for example you would go to his own hearing board and say i want to put i want to put this in here is a variance or if there is a special exception in the design hearing where we say ok you can do that if you do this this in this and likewise you can't say well that use is not permitted in this district but if you do this in this you can do that and the third mechanism that seems to be in favor is is to say is the use of what they call an overlay district where people some some minister polities will say ok we have you know overlay district in there and make it it's industrial so you can do your drilling in there and that's not right either because an overlay just like any of the others does not change the underlying slope overlay district where you would have been imposing additional conditions on any construction that would go on there or you would have a as we do in peter sponsor for example our town center overlay district which we have additional conditions to build businesses in that area so it doesn't change the underlying asone and the other the other thing is just simply to change the zoning in a particular little area become spot selling and i think i think we have a couple of graphics if your graphics people can put those up we have that we do there should be a graphic that shows the residential first let me see that's towards the end of the sly there is ok if you look at the at the sly that's on the on the left since our one that's a residential district and there's the constitution it's constitutional because it protects the health safety and welfare is compatible with and all the residential uses now if you were to to simply put drill site scenarios in the black dots those are those are not legal they're not constitutional because they are not compatible uses in that district and that's not a proper use of police power if you go to the next slide which i think was  that becomes spot yelling and doesn't that look exactly like just simply putting throwing in the middle of the of the area without doing anything if it's an incompatible use it's something that was done for a specific use or a specific person and it is inconsistent with everything else that is going on in that district and something to keep in mind while looking at that slide is if if spot zoning work to be legal in pennsylvania then everybody else that lived in that zoning district every other use would have to have exactly the same rights as those industrial districts so it would essentially become a free for all in that zoning district anybody can do anything they wanted with their property and a homeowner could put anything up any homeowner could do anything in his home any business could do anything they wanted zone he would go away that's what would happen with that zoning district that district as a whole would become unconstitutional because we can only zone by district you cannot zone by parcel that's why spot zoning is illegal then you'll often hear it referred to as a legal spot citing crime you bring up a good point here one of the things on your slide is trustee for the environment i want you explain that well in addition to the due process argument the supreme court and we made the argument to it's another constitutional right  where the citizens of pennsylvania have a constitutional right to clean air clean water protection of the environment and the government can take no action to infringe upon those rights the  was all you needed law you can't unconstitutionally zone act thirteen is unconstitutional the supreme court justice bear washington county native agreed with the commonwealth court but three justices on the supreme court said yes but we can take it even further with the environmental rights amendment what that means is not only does the government have a constitutional obligation not to infringe on an individual's right to clean air and clean water but you cannot allow a they use to be introduced into an area where people live for example that would expose them to any type of an industrial pollutants that weren't there previously so  you could not for instance let me give you an example say a community did have a large agricultural area and they said well ok we understand that we can't let industrial uses in there it's unconstitutional so what we're going to do is we're going to take and rezone that area we're going to make that industrial area the environmental rights amendment really prohibits that because now you've got people living there and you rezone it and you expose them to detrimental things to their health and to the environment constitutionally you can't do that with people living in that district well you know this already is up a whole bunch of things in my mind ok if i have a piece of property for example and on and the individual who goes in there does it through illegal purpose he starts a meth lab downstairs and i am a neighbor i am affected by that because non my property values are going don because the drug users are coming in extrapolate that to the point where he said whenever you have drilling the dust that comes out of these presents rams the bring in into the air my kids an asthmatic and all of the side now who do i sue who do i sue for bringing that that action into my community that in fact i sue the homeowner do i sue the company that is doing it do i sue both joy sue the township for allowing it i mean i said there's there's things that you can't filter out i agree and i think that's a lot of lawsuits are currently seeing going on especially in believe lawrence counties where the municipalities getting sued i believe the property owners getting sued and the answer to question is all the above because they're all responsible now one of the things that's troubled dave and i as we've seen is kind of develop over the last couple of years is these elected officials and these governments have taken an oath to uphold defend the constitution and now citizens have become burdened with forcing them to do their obligation if they took an oath to uphold so the government has really  wasn't wasn't ruling on zoning because that's all they did was a farm zoning as it existed for one hundred years and apply it to this particular law the big issue was the extension of section twenty seven the environmental rights amendment before this ruling it had been really considered as sort of what advice to the legislature really hadn't been an active and active amendment but what what the justices said was wait a second this is in article one which are the rights of the citizens and it holds the same position as do the rights of free speech right to bear arms or right of association and so forth therefore it is a citizen's right therefore it is the obligation of government at all levels to have the you have you have an affirmative obligation that was the the words of the justice used to assure that that right is is afforded to all citizens and they went into this long discussion about what a trustee right is which has legal implications but he they said that the that the environment of  of the commonwealth is is a property it's it's something that's held in trust by the commonwealth for this generation and all future generations as a big statement and it said that all the levels of government including local government which never ever thought that they were involved in this now has a right as an obligation to assure that that clean air clean water and a healthy environment  have to do for example air air quality monitoring do we have to require somebody else to do air quality monitoring what do we have to have sure to make sure that this happens can we require drilling companies to do a and so what's happening is you just you know fill in the blanks to everybody and and see what they see what the court has to say and that's where we are with it because there are many many many studies coming out right now which are showing that there are some very serious health impacts from from drilling that are occurring at significant distances from girl sites in the thirteen said that you had to have a setback of five hundred feet from a well and the companies were arguing about that and we're seeing now some some recent papers and come out that have said that two thousand feet or five thousand feet or a mile or whatever is insufficient that they're saying you know birth defects and underweight births and you know neurotoxins you know kind of bad stuff and great distances and and our citizens now are coming to us as elected officials when somebody comes in for a well drilling permit and sam hey what are you guys doing to protect us you know what is your talent you doing in terms of you know we're considering a new zoning a new  zoning ordinance for gas drilling how are you going to protect our township when five hundred feet certainly doesn't do it a mile may not do it five miles maybe not to it what do you do it well as you said this is this is always say just fall of the money and you'll find out how the law is bending politicians like to stay in office once they get there and in fact they stay there because somebody gives them money to run the next time  there's so many complexities and i hear we only have about a couple minutes left so i know that you've been asked some questions brian can you give me one or two of those questions that you've you've been asked by people well how many is the target that i live in as an example robinson timeship not long after i was out of office and there were three of us supervisors and one or two of us were going on that we were replaced with some gas friendly elected officials and they placed an ordinance in place that basically mirrored act thirteen it was act thirteen as a local ordinance allowing these uses everywhere and i often got asked the question by people living robinson don't i have a right to do anything that i want with my property and as we've discussed for you know almost the last hour yes and no you have a right to use the property to a point where you infringe on your neighbor that's really the litmus test the other thing that i get asked a lot is municipalities planning code and some of the things that dave had mentioned when there's a cough look with municipalities planning code in the constitution the constitution always has to trump that's the ultimate authority on everything is my answer  what i've seen from some of the courts actually is this idea of deemed approval for example the md approval was set up to be a protection against the government of your property rights if they make a mistake or they do something when you want to apply for something to do something say bill dolls it automatically falls on your side and against the government but if they make a mistake and it goes to court and a judge would say  i'm granting deemed approval and that uses unconstitutional the judge should take into account the fact that the uses unconstitutional before approving that use and that's why we're seeing a lot of flaws in the something page report from the cause of this supreme court in pennsylvania this is an hour long it does not do it justice by any stretch but in fact i think we brought up some good points that if nothing else maybe people will start asking their elected officials why are you violating the law or why are you violating the constitution we'd like to thank you for both coming on today because i said this is a very important issue that affects everybody not just business owners or homeowners and effects of the every student and everything thank you very much for coming with us today the topic of course has been dealing with the law in this case basically act thirteen and its effects or if it's a legal facts