What motivates Jeff Kurland and Groundswell PA to amend our Home Rule Charter with a Community Bill of Rights?

Laws are now in place to preserve our rights to clean air and clean water, and against the pollution of our natural environment. Particularly these laws are against fracking fluids and other pollutants being accidentally or purposely discharged into our waters and lands, private or public.

In Centre County, Marcellus Shale abruptly ends more than five miles from Ferguson Township, north of old Route 220. What logic imposes a “no fracking ban” in Ferguson Township, where there is nothing to frack? I have never seen even a shallow gas well in Ferguson Township, having lived in the area for more than 50 years.

Fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas — have been in Centre County for many years without our community being swept into a downward destructive spiral (whatever that is) that accommodates those bad fossil fuel and (nuclear?) industries as implied by Bill Hechinger’s letter to the CDT.

The impact on commerce is not considered by the amendment.

Supporters of Kurland’s plan definitely discourage the reading of the petition, by only providing copies of the petition at the polls, rather than publishing the details in a more open media such as the CDT and online with a Web address.

The ballot text provides no details of the amendment. “The devil is in the details!”

Carl Wendler

Pine Grove Mills