Ruling allows Scroggins back on Cabot-leased land Fracking activist will fight buffer zone in May trial

Update, April 30 2104: Scroggins V. Cabot trial, set for May 1 in Montrose, Pa., postpomed until July 2.

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A ruling Friday by a Pennsylvania judge to allow activist Vera Scroggins back on land leased by Cabot Oil & Gas is a “big win” according to her legal team, but the fight will continue in a trial scheduled for May 1.

An order, drafted by Cabot attorneys and handed down by Judge Kenneth Seamans in October, barred Scroggins from setting foot on land owned or leased by Cabot, “including but not limited to” well sites, well pads, and access roads. That language kept Scroggins from approximately 200,000 acres -- nearly 40 percent -- of Susquehanna County where Scroggins lives, including property of friends, neighbors, stores, parks, schools and health care providers.

After a hearing Monday, Judge Seamans modified the injunction to restrict Scroggins only from work areas designated by no-trespassing signs and a 100-foot buffer zone. The new order, issued on Friday, allows Vera to enter other land leased by Cabot, including markets, public spaces, physicians offices, and hospitals. It also allows her to use public roads that go by work sites, but the ruling stipulates that she cannot stop or linger at the entrances to access roads.

In an interview Friday with Associated Press reporter Michael Rubinkam, Scroggins’ attorney Scott Michelman characterized the revised order as “a big win,” but he added that the 100-foot buffer could pose unjustified restrictions. Scroggins said the revised order was “a step in the right direction. ” She told me today that she and her legal team will fight the buffer zone at a trial scheduled for May 1.

Scroggins’ vantage point was mostly from public roads by drilling sites, although Cabot claims that she also trespassed onto private land under lease by the Texas drilling company, posing a safety risk to herself and others. In a statement Friday, Cabot officials said they were "satisfied” with the ruling to maintain an injunction against Scroggins that “protects Cabot and its employees, contractors and others” and “keeps landowners from being exposed to liability that could arise from Scroggins' actions."

One of the main questions to be resolved: Is a buffer zone, which does not apply to other citizens, necessary to protect the health and safety of Scroggins and others, as Cabot claims, or is it being used by Cabot to discourage anti-fracking activists from filming or viewing Cabot operations from legitimate vantage points, as Scroggins claims.

Scroggins has taped and posted hundreds of video files on You Tube showing drilling operations in Susquehanna County since 2009, including spills, clean-ups, and discharges. The videos cast operations in a way that runs counter to the industry’s portrayal as clean and safe. Scroggins has also lead tours for political action groups, academics, journalists, and other interested parties visiting the area to learn more about drilling and the controversial practice of high volume hydraulic fracturing to stimulate the gas wells.

Cabot Oil and Gas v. Vera Scroggins

Cabot v Scroggins = heat over land rights, speech, fracking Pa. court considers injunction to limit activist’s actions

Vera Scroggins and her lawyers (left) at the Montrose courthouse Monday

A confrontation over free speech and land rights that began inside a courthouse in Montrose, Pennsylvania this morning grew more contentious outside, as lawyers and demonstrators took their arguments to the courthouse steps and parking lot.

The hearing, in the Court of Common Pleas before Judge Kenneth Seamans, involved what degree Cabot Oil & Gas can limit activist Vera Scroggins in her attempts to videotape drilling operations and related activity. The company has faced public relations and environmental problems in Dimock township after the state Department of Environmental Protection held Cabot's operations responsible for polluting an aquifer that supplies dozens of homes in Dimock Township.

Scroggins has taped and posted hundreds of video files on You Tube showing drilling operations in Susquehanna County since 2009, including spills, clean-ups, and discharges. The videos cast operations in a way that runs counter to the industry’s portrayal as clean and safe. Scroggins has also lead tours for political action groups, academics, journalists, and other interested parties visiting the area to learn more about drilling and the controversial practice of high volume hydraulic fracturing to stimulate the gas wells.

Scroggins’ vantage point was mostly from public roads by drilling sites, although Cabot claims that she also trespassed onto private land under lease by the Texas drilling company, posing a safety risk to herself and others.

One basic question before the court was whether Scroggins willfully and habitually trespassed. Her lawyers said that drilling zones were not always clearly marked with no trespassing signs, that Scroggins' ventures into drilling territory in each case were in good faith to openly ask questions and seek information, and that she always complied if asked to leave.

Two other questions, however, make the case a potential landmark test of a company’s control over property it leases but does not own. The first question is whether Cabot can legally keep Vera away from leased land, including access roads, with a buffer zone that extends into adjoining public roads and right-of-ways. The second question is whether a party that owns sub-surface rights but not surface rights can legally act as “gatekeepers” for who can and cannot come onto the land. Can a mineral rights lessee forbid a person who has been invited onto the land by the property owner to view operations?

Seamans granted the injunction in October, after Vera appeared in court without an attorney to answer the trespass charge.  Since then, the case has generated interest and outrage among activists who say Cabot is restricting limits on Scroggins’s constitutional right to report what is happening in her community, and its actions have a chilling effect on others. Attorneys Scott Michelman, of the Public Citizen Litigation Group in Washington, D.C. and Gerald Kinchey, in private practice in Sayre, Pa., have taken up Scroggins’ case pro bono.

Ostensibly, the injunction was designed to keep Scroggins away from work areas for safety reasons. But technically, the language forbids Scroggins from setting foot on land owned or leased by Cabot, “including but not limited to” well sites, well pads, and access roads. That phrasing is what makes the case a possible watershed. The Texas drilling company has leases on more than 200,000 acres -- nearly 40 percent -- of Susquehanna County where Scroggins lives, including rights to property of friends, neighbors, stores, parks, schools and health care providers. Obeying the injunction has required both active research to find out what land is leased, and also avoidance of places that she would normally go without thought.

At today’s hearing, Cabot proposed an alternative plan that would ban Scroggins from 150-foot setbacks from access roads and 500-foot buffer zones from work sites. Cabot attorney Amy Barrette, of Norton Rose Fulbright, argued the setbacks were necessary because “given Ms. Scroggins’ past conduct, if you give her an inch, she will take many, many miles, and she will be up on the well pads.”

Michelman argued that the order went well beyond addressing safety concerns and posed “a chilling effect” on the speech and actions of activists who wanted to call attention to fracking operations. An injunction that prevented Vera from entering designated work sites would be reasonable, he said, but not a buffer zone. He pointed out that such a zone could keep Scroggins from certain parts of public roads as well as areas that property owners are allowed on, even if they invited her to go with them.

The broad scope of the injunction is not about safety, but a ploy to intimidate activists, Michelman said in an interview after the hearing. “It tells them you will pay for exposing what is going on at these sites. You will pay for speaking out against the big oil and gas companies.”

During the hearing, Kinchy argued that, unless it is specifically written in a lease, the lessor of sub-surface rights does not have the right to dictate who can and cannot come onto leased property. That principal will be relevant if the case goes to trial. Jeremy Mercer, a lawyer for Cabott, rebutted that Pennsylvania case law does in fact give mineral rights holders such rights.

Seamans adjourned the hearing after attorneys from each side agreed to send the court versions of the order that they could live with. Judging by the arguments, that would be in Scroggins’ case an injunction that keeps her from well pads, work areas, and access roads, and in Cabot’s case an injunction that keeps Scroggins from both these areas and specified setbacks from these areas. The case is scheduled to be tried May 1 unless the parties can come to terms.

A small group demonstrated support for Cabot 

More than 120 people attended the hearing, many of them activists from outside the area who were there to support Scroggins. A contingent of a half dozen or so drilling proponents, including some local landowners, demonstrated support for Cabot’s position.

After the adjournment, the crowd swarmed outside the courthouse where both pro-drilling and anti-fracking groups held press conferences. In a rally on the courthouse steps, drilling supporters held signs that said “Drill Baby Drill” and “Vera Get Off Our Land.” At the same time, a mix of Scroggins supporters and adversaries gathered in the corridor that lead to the back parking lot. Vera had sat quietly during the hearing and let council do the talking. Now, flanked by her lawyers, she used the platform to criticize the industry’s safety record and to call for more scrutiny.

“It sends a message that if you speak out, you will pay. This is an outrage,” she said, citing violations that the state has issued the company. “Why are they allowed to operate?”

Barrette (right) argues with Michelman over intention of Scroggins injuncttion

After about 10 minutes, a sheriff’s deputy told the crowd to go outside because the congestion in the hallway was posing a hazard. About this time, Barrette, Cabot’s attorney, shouldered her way through the crowd to Michelman, who was standing next to Scroggins. After an exchange, they exited to the parking lot. Some of the conversation was lost in the noise, but it had to do with the merits of the injunction and the way it was written.

“Did you draft that order?” Michelman said as the two faced each other in the parking lot.

“Yes, and the order was not sought to keep her from the hospital or any of those other places,” Barrette replied.

“Its language was categorical,” Michelman said. “If you wanted something different, you should have drafted it more carefully, and if you didn't like what the court entered you should have moved to modify it. You could have done that in the last five months.”

“We gave you a very narrow proposal that you rejected many times,” Barrette said, as a cluster of reporters and spectators caught up with them. “We'll let the court decide.” Barrette referred questions from reporters to George Stark (a company spokesman who has not returned my calls) and she walked away to rejoin the pro-drilling group in the front of the courthouse.

Shale Shock Media captured some of the events following adjournment, including the confrontation in the parking lot, in the video below:

Coming soon: Audit to grade DEP’s oversight of drillers Water testing protocol remains center of transparency flap

Is the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection a lion or a lamb when it comes to regulating and policing shale gas operations?

One qualified and independent source will soon provide an answer. Im May, the office of Auditor General Eugene DePasquale is due to release a detailed investigation into the practice and protocol of the state's regulation of the drilling industry, a source from his office told me this week.

DePasquale announced the review in January, 2013, in the wake of a controversy over whether state investigators obscure or alter the outcome of investigations into drilling’s impact on water supplies by disclosing an incomplete suite of chemical tests. The intention of the probe, according to a letter from DePasquale, is to determine the "adequacy and effectiveness of DEP's monitoring of water quality as potentially impacted by shale gas development activities, including but not limited to systems and procedures for testing, screening, reporting and response to adverse impact such as contamination."

In other words, the probe will get to a question at the crux of the fracking debate: whether and to what degree the DEP is safeguarding water supplies from drilling.

The DEP’s testing protocol for wells potentially affected by drilling operations entered the public spotlight with a case by Loren Kiskadden seeking damages for pollution against the agency and Range Resources. The case, now pending in the Court of Common Pleas, claims that the department withheld full results of tests of Kiskadden’s water in June 2011 and January 2012. The ensuing “suite code” controversy came to light in September 2012 with the deposition of Taru Upadhyay, the DEP Bureau of Laboratories technical director, at a Environmental Board Hearing. Upadhyay testified that results for some metals, including copper, nickel, zinc and titanium, were not included in Kiskadden’s final report. This was not unusual, she said, because the lab only verifies concentrations of compounds ordered by the investigator from the oil and gas division, even if the samples were tested for a broader range.

DEP officials have since confirmed that the testing protocol for markers of contamination from Marcellus Shale production – including what and how many chemicals  are included in the final analysis -- falls to the discretion of individual investigators because they are best able to judge what chemicals are relevant to the investigation.

Watchdog agencies have characterized the DEP’s approach as random, incomplete, and a violation of public trust. Steve Hvozdovich, Marcellus Shale Policy Associate for Clean Water Action, said residents and watchdog agencies took it on faith that the department was following accepted protocol outlined by the federal Environmental Protection Agency in Method 200.7 – which requires testing for at least 24 different chemicals.

“This comes down to a lack of trust and a lack of transparency,” he said. “Nobody outside of the DEP offices knew this – that they were not quality controlling and quality assuring for the full 24 chemicals. It took a law-suit to bring that out … We need to have comprehensive testing, especially in a case where it originates from a residential complaint.”

Clean Water Action was one of a dozen agencies that signed a letter to the DEP on January 25, 2013 with concerns that the agency's testing methods “lack transparency; result in the withholding of vital data from affected households and the public; force residents to potentially undergo prolonged exposure to contaminants that impact health; and delay action necessary to correct pollution of drinking water supplies.”

But concerns of environmental activists are not shared by all. The DEP’s approach to regulation and enforcement under drilling supporter Governor Tom Corbett has a lot to do with the boss’s political values of how much government should be overseeing private business. The oil and gas industry – provider of cheap abundant energy that we all demand – has been the long-time beneficiary of regulatory passes. For starters, the entire problem of determining what, how, and if chemicals affect water is prodigiously complicated by the fact that the industry is exempt from federal laws that require disclosure and regulations of chemicals injected into the ground, and also laws governing hazardous waste coming out. Corbett, who won election in 2010 partially on a platform to limit state regulations on the industry, has been praised by industry supporters who defend the DEP oversight as sufficient and responsible.

No matter what it says, DePasquale’s report, coming in May, will likely be controversial due to the political volatility of the subject matter. In addition to the water-testing issue, the probe will “determine the adequacy and effectiveness of DEP’s monitoring of the handling, treatment and disposal of waste connected with shale gas development activity, including but not limited to systems and procedures for testing, tracking, treating, disposal, data collection and analysis, reuse and recycling, reporting, and response to adverse impact such as contamination.”

It’s sure to add a new wrinkle to the shale gas debate as the election year heats up, beginning with primaries among gubernatorial candidates who will likely have something to say about it. Those include John Hanger, a Democrat, who served as DEP Secretary under the Ed Rendell administration. Hanger is a gas supporter, but he is also in the pro-regulatory camp. As DEP chief he has been critical of – and sometimes at odds with -- certain companies he characterized as rogues. He has called on the DEP to reform its protocol to ensure a comprehensive data set of water test results gets to people who are potentially affected by drilling. The degree Hanger's message resonates with primary voters will be one of many tests of how much weight regulatory reform carries in the larger political equation.