Munroe Falls Files Court Case
Over Oil & Gas Well Authority Jeff Saunders • Dix Communications
F
ive years after the city began legal battles over control of oil and gas wells within city boundaries, there is a new court case in the matter. According to Summit County Court of Common Pleas records, the city on May 27 filed a complaint for declaratory judgement and request for stay, naming Ravenna-based Beck Energy Corp. and South Carolina-based Sonoco Products Co. as defendants, in connection with an oil and gas well Beck wants to drill on a parcel of land owned by Sonoco. The parcel is just west of Sonoco’s paper mill on the west side of Route 91, a little north of Munroe Falls Avenue, according to
documents filed by the city with the court. zoning ordinances.” The city is asking that the court “declare whether Munroe Falls has the right to enforce its zoning ordinances relative to oil and gas wells within its municipal jurisdiction; to declare whether Beck is required to obtain a zoning certificate and/or a zoning variance from Munroe Falls prior to drilling the Sonoco well, and further requests a stay of all drilling activities by Beck until” the court reaches a decision. The city is arguing that while state law gives the Ohio Department of Natural Resources authority to regulate oil and gas production in the state, the law “does not expressly prohibit the enforcement of local
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Mayor James Armstrong, an attorney, told the Stow Sentry June 2 that the case is about “asking the court to answer a question of law” following a February 2015 Ohio Supreme Court decision in a case filed by the city in 2013. The 4-3 decision ruled that the state has “sole and exclusive authority” over regulation of oil and gas wells and it resulted in the city removing ordinances on its books regulating drilling operations because the decision made them unenforceable. While part of the majority on the decision, Justice Terrence O’Donnell separately wrote that the opinion does not address local land use ordinances.
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