In June 2014, the elected supervisors of Grant Township unanimously enacted a Community Bill of Rights Ordinance that banned the underground injection of toxic waste from oil and gas fracking. The township was then sued by Pennsylvania General Energy, a company that wants to inject waste underground there, a practice that is known to pose risk to nearby drinking water supplies. All of Grant Township’s residents are on private well water.

PGE asked the court “to force the Township to pay damages for violating the corporation’s civil rights” by banning wastewater injection, and “to force the Township to pay for the corporation’s legal fees.”

Though a judge struck down parts of the township’s Ordinance in favor of PGE, she based her decision on the fact that Grant was a “second class township” under state code and didn’t have the authority to stop waste injection. So the people of Grant Township set about and democratically elected to become a Home Rule Municipality instead. They then drafted and passed a Home Rule Charter with help from Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), which is also representing Grant Township pro bono in the ongoing litigation with PGE.

Grant’s Bill of Rights does a few things, including:

Recognizes people’s rights to clean air and water

Asserts the right to local community self-government

Proclaims the right to be taxed fairly

Grant Township Supervisor and Chairman Jon Perry summed up the township’s ongoing, several year battle by saying, “Sides need to be picked. Should a polluting corporation have the right to inject toxic waste, or should a community have the right to protect itself?”

Perry continued, “I was elected to serve this community, and to protect the rights in our Charter voted in by the people I represent. If we have to physically and nonviolently stop the trucks from coming in because the courts fail us, we will do so. And we invite others to stand with us.”