Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Residents Tell Council: No Drilling In Our Park

More than 200 residents showed up for the Council meeting last night. 

They were there to speak out against Council's plan to allow two frac gas wells to be drilled in the park and to witness Council's vote on the drilling resolution, Resolution 6-2012.

The crowd exceeded the council chamber's legal limit, so some residents had to listen on speakers installed in the City Hall rotunda.

The public spoke for an hour and a half.

Among the speakers, 2 former mayors (Fran Hogg and Tom Hughes) and the representative for a 3rd former mayor (Virginia Swanson) stepped up to the microphone to express their opposition to Council's drilling resolution. They told  Council that Highland Heights residents have always opposed drilling in the park.

Council did not vote on Resolution 6-2012 last night. 

Council President Cathy Murphy announced at the beginning of the meeting that Council had decided to pull the resolution off the agenda----not because Council had changed its mind, but because Council  ( more than 4 years after first hearing about the issue) suddenly decided to rethink the idea of drilling in the wetlands near the park parking lot.

Murphy said that the reason the drilling resolution was being pulled was because Council was:

"...looking to relocate wellhead # 1 (the wetlands one). We heard numerous concerns about the wetlands from residents last week.  We are looking at negotiating with Bass Energy to move that wellsite to an area in the adjacent parking lot."

Ironically, that parking lot sits on the very same wetlands.  Did the city obtain wetland permits before installing that parking lot? No, it did not.

Murphy told residents that the drilling resolution will be put back on the agenda sometime in the future, maybe in two weeks.

If Council members had any common sense, they would listen to what residents and our city's veteran leaders had to say and leave Resolution 6-2012 off the agenda permanently. 
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