Township Discussing Drilling Ordinance

With natural gas drilling companies increasing their presence in Western Pennsylvania, the Scott Township Planning Commission is garnering feedback from residents as it works to draft a drilling ordinance.

The commission will meet at 7 p.m. tonight inside the municipal building’s main meeting room to share with the residents what has been discussed over the past few months and ask for advice on how the proposed ordinance can be improved.

“We don’t feel, at this point, that we expect to see drilling any time in the near future,” said planning commission member Jane Sorcan. “We just want to be prepared should we need to have an ordinance in place. It’s not like we know they’re going to be out there drilling tomorrow.”

With Scott Township being such a highly populated municipality, there are few areas for drillers to target. But Sorcan said there could be certain pockets available for drilling or in neighboring communities that overlap into Scott.

She added there needs to be guidelines in place to protect the township and its residents.

“We have been trying to stay in compliance with the (state) oil and gas laws,” Sorcan said. “We don’t want to infringe on those laws already there.”

The planning commission will take the outline for the ordinance, share it with the residents and tweak it upon hearing their suggestions. Sorcan said it will be quite some time before the planning commission submits it to the township commissioners for consideration.

“There is no impending doom here,” she said.