There was a reason Lafayette’s city council voted to oppose the city-wide fracking ban on the ballot last November: they said it would cost money to litigate and scare businesses away from Lafayette. We’ve already seen the former come to fruition, and a new article from the Daily Camera proves the latter.
XetaWave founder and CEO Jonathan Sawyer places his decision to expand his business in Louisville over Lafayette squarely at the feet of the newly-passed fracking ban. His company produces long-range radios and wireless technology platforms used by those in the oil and gas industry. Because of the broad wording of the new fracking ban, Sawyer says he was unable to get a full assurance from Lafayette’s city lawyer that the new law wouldn’t affect his company. As he told The Camera:
“My read of it is that we sell into the oil and gas industry and our equipment is used in the infrastructure of fracking,” he said. “The way the ordinance reads is that it doesn’t matter where the fracking infrastructure is.”
…”If the city attorney cannot assure me that I am not in violation of an ordinance in the city of Lafayette, that tells me there is a substantial risk that I, my employees or my company could be prosecuted,” Sawyer said. “That’s pretty much a showstopper.”
This new law, ran behind the scenes by out-of-state fractivists has resulted in legal fees coming out of Lafayette’s coffers and made the city less palatable for businesses to move to.
Kelly Brough, president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, said it shouldn’t be a surprise that a measure like Lafayette’s could make the city seem less business-friendly than other places.
“Any time you create greater uncertainty for companies, you create more unpredictability about whether they can locate there,” she said. “We’re still trying to put Coloradans back to work and anything that doesn’t help that is unfair to every Coloradan.”
That’s Colorado jobs and Colorado money being wasted by Pennsylvanians determined to tilt at windmills. Can we please keep the crazies on the other side of the Mississippi from now on?
At the same time, there are fractivists from California meddling in Pennsylvania's fracking decisions.