Voters in State College will be asked in November to ban the extraction of natural gas within borough limits.

That question is part of an environmental bill of rights supported by the advocacy group Groundswell PA, which petitioned for a referendum on the issue on the general election ballot Nov. 8. The county’s Board of Elections approved Friday putting the referendum question on borough ballots.

Among its provisions, the bill states that people are entitled to clean air, water and ecosystems and that the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, process for natural gas extraction violates that.

Even if it’s passed, the law won’t supercede state law that prohibits municipalites and local bodies from stopping oil and natural gas production.

Braden Crooks, the founder of the group and a former Penn State student, said the referendum question is meant to challenge that law.

“We think people should be able to make these decisions at the local level,” Crooks said. “We think it makes sense, and it’s democratic.”

Kathryn Klaber, the president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry advocacy organization, said initiatives like this are “misguided” because oil and natural gas development is regulated at the state level, not the local level.

“As a state and as a nation, we should be doing everything we can to encourage environmentally proven and tightly regulated American natural gas development, which is generating jobs and prosperity for tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians and economic development across the region,” she said in a statement Friday.

It’s not known whether anyone will ever want to drill for gas in the borough. The Marcellus Shale that is the focus of most gas drilling in Pennsylvania now doesn’t extend as far south as the borough.

The Utica Shale is a few thousand feet below the Marcellus layer, is thicker and extends over more territory. It’s potential gas reserves are still being being assessed.

The referendum question will read: “Should the State College Home Rule Charter be amended to add a Community Bill of Rights which bans commercial natural gas extraction within the borough?”

Anyone interested in the initiative is invited to attend a meeting at 8 p.m. Sunday in the New Leaf Lab, 100 S. Fraser St.

In addition to the State College question, the elections board approved a referendum question for Ferguson Township voters. They’ll be asked to decide to lower the minimum age requirement to be elected a township supervisor.

The age issue came about when 19-year-old Penn State student Elliott Killian ran a write-in campaign in the township’s third ward in May’s primary election.

He received both Republican and Democratic nominations but later discovered he would be ineligible to serve under the current charter, which stipulates that a supervisor must be at least 21.

Ferguson Township supervisors voted on Aug. 1 to have the question placed on the ballot.

This question will ask if the township’s Home Rule Charter shall “be amended to delete the requirement that a person be at least 21 years of age in order to be qualified to serve as Ferguson Township supervisor? The requirements to serve would be that the person be a citizen of the United States and a resident and registered elector of Ferguson Township for at least one year prior to the date of his or her election.”

The last day to register to vote for the general election is Oct. 11.

Mike Dawson can be reached at 231-4616.