Elizabeth Township punts gas well permit decision until September
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Elizabeth Township’s Board of Commissioners put off voting on a permit that would authorize the continuation of EQT gas wells on Monday, saying that they needed more time and reached an agreement with the company to extend the decision timeline until September.
The township’s agreement comes just as it approached a 45-day deadline to approve or deny a conditional use permit for EQT’s six-well Heracles site, located less than a half-mile from the Elizabeth Forward High School. The project has been at the center of a three-year legal battle that pitted the company and township commissioners against local environmental advocacy group Protect Elizabeth Township (PET).
Township residents voiced concern over what they saw as the project’s negative environmental and developmental implications at the commissioners’ workshop meeting Monday.
“I have a lot of concern about how this affects long-term development of the population here in Elizabeth Township,” Elizabeth resident Catherine Anderson said. “We seem to be shrinking. I’m not thinking oil and gas infrastructure will be a draw for new residents or new development or new housing.”
The details of the agreement between the township and EQT are unclear. Commission President Josh Walls said the township and company mutually agreed to postpone the decision. He directed further questions to the township’s solicitor, Matt Racunas, who declined to comment.
The board’s incoming September decision represents a second bite at the apple for EQT.
PET filed a lawsuit against the township shortly after it approved a conditional use permit for the project in 2023. The permit allows property owners to use lands in ways not permitted by right in their zoning districts. The fracked wells started producing natural gas in April 2024, according to EQT legal filings.
A state appellate court threw out the original conditional use authorization last year, ruling that the township violated its own zoning regulations when it approved the project. EQT came back with a plan it believed would alleviate the issue by subdividing the property into separate lots. The township approved the subdivision plan in September.
The final step for the operation is a new conditional use permit. At a three-hour conditional use hearing in July, residents voiced concerns over the possible environmental and health impacts of the wells.
PET is challenging the subdivision in court. It also filed a separate lawsuit to halt production at the site entirely, alleging that the site is unauthorized to produce gas without an existing permit. Both lawsuits are currently pending.
Blaine Lucas, an attorney representing EQT, said at the July hearing that the company doesn’t “necessarily agree” with PET’s position that the company no longer has an approval for the conditional use.
From April 2024 to April 2026 the site produced just over 35.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas.
Lucas Dufalla is the Southern Communities reporter at Pittsburgh’s Public Source and can be reached at lucas@publicsource.org.
This article first appeared on Pittsburgh’s Public Source and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
