At their July 12th meeting Plain Township Trustees Louis Giavasis and Al Leno (both Democrats) outvoted Trustee Scott Halls (a Republican) to ban horizontal hydraulic fracking on Plain Township property. This action comes on the heels of a resolution passed on February 8, 2011 that requested state of Ohio officials to impose a statewide moratorium on hydraulic fracking in the Marcellus Shale deposits thought to underlie northeast Ohio.
Apparently, the move was not enough for a northeast Ohio group known as the Plain Land Alliance for Nature (PLAN). The group has sent out e-mails with a flyer attached (see below) urging citizens to attend the regular fourth week of the month (i.e. July 26, 2011 at 6:00 PM) trustee meeting to press trustees to go further and ban horizontal hydraulic fracking across the entire township to encompass all lands, not just township owned property.
It was in December, 2010 that Giavasis got the "anti-horizontal-fracturing" ball rolling. For background information on "the Giavasis Initiative" CLICK HERE to visit a blog produced by the SCPR writing about a controversy of sort between WHBC Points to Ponder host Ron Ponder and the Plain trustee on a planned township meeting on the pros and cons of hydraulic fracking.
While matters got smoothed over and Ponder did put together two separate meetings (one general topic meeting and another featuring government regulators and oil and gas industry representatives; January 20th & 27th, respectively) at GlenOak High School (located in Plain Township) in January of this year, those meetings has not quieted down the continuing controversy in parts of Stark County (e.g. Alliance, Canton, Massillon, Hartville, North Canton and, of course, the birthplace - Plain Township).
One has to wonder as to whether or not Giavasis has opened the proverbial "Pandora's Box" with his introduction of the hydraulic fracking issue into local government deliberations back in December of 09.
Tuesday night it will be PLAN marching on township hall. But is this the beginning of a continual parade of anti-fracking groups beseiging Plain in coming months?
Despite the escalation of tension on Plain's trustees, don't look for the trustees to expand the ban to meet the PLAN. In the Stark County Political Report video interview of Trustee Giavasis (07/19/2011), he cautions that the Plain Township trustees are not out to start World War III in Ohio on the issue of horizontal hydraulic fracturing:
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