A high-profile anti-fracking activist who often gives
tours of natural gas drilling sites in northeastern Pennsylvania’s
Marcellus Shale region asked a judge Monday for relief from an order
barring her from stepping foot on more than 300 square miles of land
owned or leased by one of the state’s leading natural gas drillers.
Vera
Scroggins said the injunction, in place since October, has effectively
prevented her from traveling to her favorite grocery store, eye doctor,
hospital, restaurants, businesses and friends’ homes because all of them
have leased land to Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.
Her attorneys asked Susquehanna County Judge Kenneth Seamans to lift or modify his order. A ruling could
come this week.
"It’s
tough to try to figure out, where can I stand? Where can I walk?"
Scroggins said after the hearing in Montrose. "I never used to have to
think about that. It’s not a pleasant thing to endure."
A company
spokesman said Cabot is only interested in preventing the activist from
trespassing on its active drilling sites and contended that Scroggins,
who’s used to attracting media attention, is simply out for more
publicity.
Scroggins regularly gives bus tours to politicians,
community groups, and anti-fracking celebrities such as Yoko Ono, Sean
Lennon and Susan Sarandon, showing them drilling sites, pipelines,
compressor stations and other signs of Pennsylvania’s burgeoning gas
industry and introducing them to residents who say they’ve been harmed.
She often posts videos of natural gas production sites online.
Cabot
said it sought the order because Scroggins habitually trespassed onto
its land, putting herself and her guests in harm’s way, distracting
employees from their work and interfering with natural gas production.
Each time, Scroggins was ordered to leave or escorted off the property
and told not to come back, but she refuses to stay away, the company
said.
Seamans’ order bars Scroggins from entering property "owned
and/or leased by Cabot … including but not limited to well sites, well
pads and access roads." That accounts for nearly 40 percent of
Susquehanna County’s land mass.
Scroggins said she’s spent hours in the county courthouse trying to figure out where she can and can’t
go.
"Somebody
like Vera is indispensable in trying to monitor what is going on up in
Susquehanna County," said one of her lawyers, Vic Walczak of the
American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. "And when you get an
injunction of the type that Cabot secured last October, you’re
essentially putting her out of business. You’re preventing her from
being able to engage in this timeless function of citizen activist."
Cabot
spokesman George Stark said the company has told Scroggins and her
lawyers repeatedly since January that Cabot has no interest in
Scroggins’ choice of grocery store or hospital.
"The focus has
been on our active work sites," he said. "The incidents were escalating
and the amount of people she was bringing and putting in harm’s way was
increasing. … We had to take an action. We had asked her in the past
to not trespass. She did not listen."
Cabot told the judge it is
willing to modify the injunction to specify that Scroggins isn’t
permitted to intrude on well sites, access roads, staging areas and
other places where the company is active. Scroggins’ attorneys object to
Cabot’s proposed 150-foot setback requirement.
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