06/15/2009 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

Regular Council Meeting Minutes 6-15-09 Page 30 Council President Buckholtz asked, if we want to try to put together, like you said, allegedly being taken away, nobody's really tested that, so , if we want to come up with our own ordinance here, a more restrictive ordinance for residential, obviously you have had suggestions or we have gleaned some ideas right there, but we are going to put it through our Ordinance Review Committee and tweak a few ideas here. You are doing your work in Columbus and we would love to piggy-back on that, but we would like to do something here. Senator Grendell's understanding, remember he is a zoning lawyer in his other life, used to be, he understands from some comments that have been made by the Director there's probably some room in the regulatory area at the local level until you get to the point that you are preventing a well from being sited and drilled. Senator Grendell thinks you have some room, but he does not know where that room is exactly. His guess is buffering, screening, he thinks you have room there. But when your ordinance gets to the point that it just prevents the well from being drilled, or prevents ODNR from deciding ultimately the site of the well, they will give some of that as long as a well can be drilled, that's where you are going to cross into the ODNR problem. Ultimately ODNR's going to allow just about anything within reason as long as the well gets drilled. Senator Grendell thinks they are going to let you have some leeway on regulatory. Council President Buckholtz asked, what would they do, sue us? Senator Grendell replied, yes. Council President Buckholtz asked, would the driller sue us? Would the ODNR sue us? Senator Grendell replied, it may be both. The way he would see this is, the ODNR will issue, you will actually sue someone else. The ODNR will issue them a permit. This is how it happened in Mayfield Heights. ODNR will issue them the permit. You will see a rig pull up on a dirt road. Your police department will be told to stop them if they are violating your zoning. At that point, Senator Grendell's guess is, unless the rig operator is an idiot, his lawyers will sue you and ODNR and the Attorney General's office may or may not weigh into the fight. Senator Grendell is not sure where that will end up in the process. His guess is you will end up getting sued by the driller because the driller is going to say he has a permit and your zoning has been preempted by State law and he is drilling his well. Then he is going to threaten you with all sorts of nasty damages under 42 USC 1983 and threaten civil rights violations, his rights, and sue all you guys individually too. That's how nasty these people are. Dr. Parker asked, when you talk about the State's rights, you would think that based on some of the incidents we have seen with aquifer pollution, types of materials that they are putting into these wells to drill them that the Environmental Protection Agency which is on the national level, would try to step in and say that there's pollutions going on here that overrule. We are constantly having to put up with these types of issues when we want to do something. Why wouldn't the EPA come in and say, you are essentially in cases creating a hazardous waste site? Senator Grendell replied, you hit the nail on the head. He just came from a septic meeting because Senator Niehaus and the boys are trying to also require a$35,000.00 septic system, but he got the Ohio Department of Health so concerned about groundwater that you no longer can