MIDDLESEX TWP — A nonprofit environmental quality group is fighting an ordinance passed in August by township supervisors that determines the location of shale gas drilling operations.

Matt Walker, community outreach director for the Clean Air Council, announced last week that the group has appealed the amendment to the township’s zoning hearing board.

The amendment allows well sites in the restricted industrial, rural residential, agricultural and residential agricultural zones. The wells are allowed as a conditional use in the town center, highway commercial and regional commercial zones.

Gas compressor stations, a particular sticking point with many residents and some members of the township’s planning commission, are allowed as a conditional use in the rural residential, agricultural, and regional commercial zones.

A group of Mars School District parents attempted to have a two-mile nonindustrial overlay placed around the five schools that are within a mile of five gas wells being planned for the Bob and Kim Geyer farm on Denny Road. Neither the Middlesex nor Adams township supervisors approved the overlay.

The drilling site is in Middlesex Township. The schools are in Adams Township.

The Middlesex Planning Commission in August voted 3-2 to recommend the supervisors table voting on the amendment because of concerns about processing plants, compressor stations, water impoundments, storage of materials on well sites and other issues. But, the board of supervisors voted to accept the zoning amendment.

Rex Energy said drilling on the Geyer wells is expected to begin in January or February, and that Rex has added safety features as a result of the parents’ fears that the wells will affect the health and safety of the district’s 3,200 students.

The parent group last week asked the Mars School Board for additional technology to protect the district’s students and staff from pollution at the well site.

“Middlesex Township should not have allowed major industrial uses like fracking to operate near vulnerable populations like children,” Walker said. “The zoning changes contradict sound planning practices and could dramatically change the Mars area into a heavy industrial and polluting landscape, complete with fracking, compressor stations, processing plants and pipelines.”

Before the amendment’s passage in August, township solicitor Mike Hnath maintained that the Geyer wells were within the existing zoning ordinance because they are an accessory use in an agricultural zone.

Walker said the council’s attorney disagrees with that stance.

“Before the zoning changes, Rex Energy would not have legally been able to frack in the same location,” said the council’s chief attorney and executive director, Joseph Otis Minott.

Hnath said he could not comment on Minott’s contention or the amendment appeal.

Mike Gallagher, the attorney representing the zoning hearing board, said Friday he could not comment on the case before evidence is heard.

But he explained that the zoning hearing board must set up a hearing within 60 days of the appeal, and advertise the hearing to the public twice.

The parties involved, which Gallagher presumes will be Hnath, the Clean Air Council, and Rex Energy if they so desire, will give their evidence at the hearing. The board will then decide whether to eliminate the zoning amendment or keep it.

If either side disagrees with the ruling, they can appeal to Butler County Court, Gallagher said.

Gallagher also checked with the state Bar Association’s Ethics Hotline regarding whether his representing the zoning hearing board would be a conflict of interest, since he serves as the solicitor for Adams Township.

“They said it is not (a conflict of interest,)” Gallagher said.

He expects the hearing to take place in late November or early December.

Rex Energy workers are currently building the three-quarter mile access road to the Geyer well off Route 228. They will then develop the well site, set the well casings, and then drill and hydrofracture the wells to access the natural gas.