(a) The Village Council of Yellow Springs finds that the commercial extraction of gas and oil and the placement of injection wells in Yellow Springs Village violates the rights of residents and neighborhoods, and poses a significant threat to their health, safety, and welfare. Moreover, widespread environmental and human health impacts have resulted from commercial gas and oil extraction and injection wells in other areas. Regulating these activities of commercial gas and oil extraction or injection well placement is not a solution as it automatically means allowing commercial gas and oil extraction to occur within the Village, thus violating the rights of residents and neighborhoods and endangering their health, safety, and welfare by allowing the deposit of toxins into the air, soil, water, environment, and the bodies of residents within the Village.
(b) Meaningful regulatory limitations and prohibitions concerning gas and oil extraction, along with zoning and land use provisions, are barred because they conflict with certain legal powers claimed by resource extraction corporations. The Village Council recognizes that environmental and economic sustainability cannot be achieved if the rights of municipal majorities are routinely overridden by corporate minorities claiming certain legal powers. The Village Council also recognizes that sustainability cannot be achieved within a system of preemption which enables those corporations to use state governments to override local self-government, and which restricts municipalities to only that lawmaking specifically authorized by state government.
(c) The Village Council believes that the protection of residents, neighborhoods, and the natural environment constitutes the highest and best use of the police powers that this municipality possesses. The Village Council also believes that local legislation that embodies the interests of the community is mandated by the doctrine of the consent of the governed, and the right to local, community self-government. Thus, the Village Council hereby adopts this chapter, which establishes a bill of rights for the residents and communities of the Village, and which bans the extraction of gas and oil and any storage of frack waste within Yellow Springs Village, along with associated activities, because that extraction and those activities cannot be achieved without violating the rights of residents and communities or endangering their health, safety, and welfare, and which removes certain legal powers from gas and oil extraction corporations operating within Yellow Springs Village, while nullifying state laws, permits, and other authorizations which interfere with the rights secured by this chapter.
(Ord. 2012-17. Passed 10-1-12.)