Judge Dismisses Rochester Hills Fracking Lawsuit

An Oakland County Circuit Court judge has sided with the city of Rochester Hills on its decision to lease park and cemetery land for oil and gas exploration without putting the matter to a public vote .

Oakland County Judge James Alexander dismissed the lawsuit filed by the grassroots citizens group Don’t Drill the Hills, which alleged the city ignored its own charter by approving the leases allowing Jordan Development Co. and West Bay Exploration Co., The Oakland Press reports.

The leases allowed to use horizontal drilling to explore for, extract and sell oil/gas from Tienken Park, Nowicki Park and Stoney Creek Cemetery, but a 2011 charter amendment requires that city-owned parks can’t be sold or leased without a vote.

Don’t Drill the Hills hasn’t decided whether to appeal the matter. Alexander dismissed the lawsuit after hearing testimony from both sides, saying that “no actual controversy exists” and that residents “had no standing to enforce their right under the city charter to vote on sales or leases of city parkland,” said Port Huron attorney Timothy Lozen, who represents the plaintiffs.

He said in a statement that judge’s dismissal of the lawsuit on Election Day was “cruelly ironic.”

“I am deeply disappointed in the court’s ruling that Rochester Hills voters do not have the right to vote on the city’s sale of the oil and gas development rights to city parklands even though the city voters overwhelming(ly) approved a recent charter amendment that prohibited selling, leasing or transferring city parkland without voter approval,” he wrote in the statement.

Neither Rochester Hills Mayor Bryan Barnett nor attorney John Staran, who represented the city in the case, were available for comment.

In August, Rochester Hills joined several other southeast Michigan municipalities in approving moratoriums on oil and gas drilling while they sort out how to best regulate the activity.

“This has gotten bigger than us,” Don’t Drill the Hills member Jeannie Morris said of similar groups in Shelby Township and Auburn Hills. “People are concerned about residential drilling. This is not going away.”