Summary:
This is a very important decision – not only upholding the DRBC drilling ban, but also using the Environmental Rights Amendment (ERA) to the PA Constitution as it should be used, to preserve the “natural resources [that] are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come.” Under the ERA, the state has a trustee responsibility for that preservation, which is not to be interpreted as possible monetary rewards for proposed development.

From PA Environment Digest Blog analysis:
The Third Circuit, citing Clean Air Council and its partners’ amicus brief, held that the legislative plaintiffs’ (the PA Senate Republican Caucus) ERA argument “fundamentally misunderstands the ERA and would turn it ‘upside down’ if accepted.”

PA The Environmental Rights Amendment:
The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.

Read about the author of the ERA, which was added to the Pennsylvania constitution in 1971.

Read more on the PA Environment Digest Blog.