PA Environment Digest Blog: PA Shale Gas & Public Health Conference: Supervisor Cindy Fisher - How Cecil Township Adopted 2,500 Foot Setbacks From Shale Gas Well Pads With Extensive Public Involvement Facing Threats And Intimidation

On February 19, the PA League of Women Voters, Physicians For Social Responsibility PA and Duquesne University held the PA Shale Gas and Public Health Conference in Pittsburgh featuring six panels and 24 speakers and moderators sharing the latest information on the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania.

The Oil and Gas Policy Panel featured Cindy Fisher, a Cecil Township Supervisor from Washington County [Read more here], who described the journey taken by the Township to enact an ordinance increasing the minimum state 500 foot setback to 2,500 feet from shale gas well pads and other requirements to better protect their community from the shale gas industry. Read more here.

Here are Supervisor Fisher’s remarks--

I'm Cindy Fisher. It's kind of odd to be here today. It's my first time back to Duquesne University since I graduated a long time ago as a professional instead of a student. So this is a very awesome moment for me, if you'll give me this.

I've been doing this for a really long time. This is my 13th year as a Cecil Township supervisor.

As he said, I was reelected in November of 2025 to another six-year term. So when I'm completed at the end of my third term, I'll be doing this for 18 years.

We really are at the beginning of the oil and gas development. One of the first well pads in Washington County was drilled in Cecil Township.

How I got involved in local government is I started hearing about some of the things that were happening around compressor stations, oil and gas well pads, and those things in the area.

And I had young kids. We'd just recently moved to the home we were in and I'm like, "I want to go find out what's going on here."

So I started regularly attending Cecil Township Board of Supervisors meetings and I thought, something's just not adding up. What they're telling us cannot possibly be true.

You cannot pollute the environment 500 feet from somebody's back door and everything's just going to be fine. Roses.

And I'm a person who's very skeptical by nature so if you tell me something, I'm going to believe you, but I'm going to look for the data to back you up, to make sure that what you're telling me is true.

Challenge Accepted

And I'll never forget this moment. I said to somebody, I said, "I think I want to run for township supervisor."

And the person who was retiring from the seat said, "If you win, you'll shock the world."

And I thought, wow. Challenge accepted. So I did. I won. I won that time, and I've been in that seat for 13 years.

We were at the very beginning of this in that I was in office when Act 13... I don't know how many of you know what Act 13 was, but it was a law that was attempted to be passed by Pennsylvania government about 15 years ago, or about 13 years ago or so, in which that would've taken local control of oil and gas development.

Or would've taken control from local governments for oil and gas development and given it to the state, and would've just made statewide setbacks.

And for those of you that have been in and around Pennsylvania, you know that every community is different.

Cecil Township is 27 square miles, and we are very different from all of our bordering municipalities; North Strabane, Peter, South Fayette.

And I felt very strongly, and so did the board at the time, most of the members of the board at the time, that we couldn't lose this control.

And as you saw, Senator [Katie] Muth said, "Unfortunately, the state doesn't always do a great job..."

Let's just say it. They don't do a great job of regulating oil and gas development. And so we challenged that. We challenged that.

Challenging State Law Taking Away Local Control

We were one of the communities that challenged Act 13. And again somebody said to me, "You're never going to win this. You're never going to beat the oil and gas industries. They have all the money in the world."

But we have all the fight in the world, and we will fight to protect our communities. And we did.

And Act 13, we ended up winning and the PA Supreme Court for Act 13, and that law was not allowed to be put into action. [Read more here]

A couple years later down the road, at that point we had two existing well pads, what I call first generation well pads.

Kind of where they come, they drill three or four, sometimes five wells, they plant grass, and walk away. It's not always easy and clean, but it's usually pretty quick.

Maybe a year, year and a half. There's still problems with it, don't get me wrong, but it's from a, we're going to bother you, neighbor kind of thing.

In Cecil [Township], anyways, there wasn't a ton of bother.

There Were No Rules

And so we realized, though, that in doing that, that if we continue to allow this, they were just going to continue to put well pads all across our township in every zoning district.

And for those of you that are familiar with local government, we govern by zones. So industrial goes in industrial zones, commercial goes in commercial zones, residential goes in residential zones.

The problem with oil and gas development is there's no rules, so you can live in a residential zone and have an oil and gas well pad 500 feet from your back door, and that's what we have in Cecil.

So as things started to ramp up with oil and gas, even though we won Act 13, we felt great about it.

They started applying for more and more pads. And they specifically applied for two pads.

One was 500 feet from a resident, Michelle Stonemark and her family [Read more here]. And one was less than 3,000 feet from our intermediate school.

They applied for these through conditional use and we denied one of them, but it was able to continue to move forward because we didn't have the policy in place in order to back us up.

So in 2020, we started going through the process of updating our Oil and Gas Ordinance.

It didn't go very far, unfortunately, because of the pandemic and because of the state of Cecil Township.

There were a lot of people that still were getting money from oil and gas or truly believed that it was beneficial to the community.

I Stood In People’s Houses While They Cried

Roll forward, three additional pads, 15 new wells, and people really starting to see the impact of oil and gas development.

500 feet. We had the videos. I stood in people's houses while they cried because literally, when I tell you their houses were shaking, their houses were shaking.

When I tell you they would be woken up at all hours of the night for days at a time, you almost get delirious at that point because you literally are being woken up constantly from the sound of a well pad 500 feet from your back door.

They put up monitors, air monitors, in which they could see that they were literally being poisoned in real time, and there was absolutely nothing that they could do about it.

And so I started to realize that the only way that my fellow board members were going to do anything was to see it themselves.

So I started bringing them around. I want you to come to this person's house. I want you to see it for yourself. I want you to go on this well pad tour.

I want you to see what it's like to be 500 feet from a well pad. And slowly the board started realizing.

And so we decided that it was time to start the process again.

Considering A New Ordinance

So in January of 2024 we opened our first hearing for oil and gas setbacks. I can tell, you standing here today, I had absolutely no idea where that was going to go.

At that point our setback was the state minimum, was 500 feet.

I didn't know if it was going to change at all. I wasn't sure whether we were going to get 500 feet, 1,000 feet, 1,500 feet.

Quite honestly, I didn't know what the answer was. What the right answer was for that.

And as we started advertising these hearings, more and more and more people showed up. And not people from outside of Cecil Township.

People from inside of Cecil Township who have experience as engineers, as doctors, as lawyers who've experienced what it's like to live in close proximity to wall pads.

We had residents who literally stood for time after time after time, telling people what it's like to live close to these well pads.

And so after five hearings, went through five hearings, in November of 2025 we sat down.

I'll never forget this moment. We sat down. And again, I had no idea where the vote was going to go. We sat down to vote.

And let me back up a second. I can picture. People would come to these hearings and they would hold these little signs, and it would say, "2,500 feet." And they would just sit there the whole hearing and hold it.

So we sat down to vote and I saw all these people with these signs, and we went through the roll call vote and it passed.

And I literally felt almost like an out-of-body moment. Like, "I cannot believe, after almost 10 months of hearings, this is where we ended up."

I could not believe we were here.

I’m Strong For The People Who Don’t Have A Voice

And I say to people all the time. People ask me how I do it. How are you strong?

And I'll get into this in a second, what I've had to go through over the past 15 years, but I'm not strong for me.

I'm strong for the people who don't have a voice themselves.

The person whose house I stood in and watched their kids play in the yard because they were asking me, is this safe?

And I couldn't answer them.

I'm strong for the person who calls at 1:00 in the morning because they cannot sleep and they cannot take another minute of the [gas] flare by them.

I'm strong for the residents who deserve the protection.

There's a well pad less than 3,000 feet from our intermediate school. I'm not going to stand here and tell you that it doesn't haunt me every single day.

If there's an emergency there, I quite frankly don't think we could get those kids out.

We don't have the fire department staff. We don't have the ability.

I would go, I would do everything I could, but these are the things that haunt me.

When I ran for election the very first time, I'm totally self-funded. I pay for all my campaigns myself.

I made a promise that the only person that has to be okay with the decisions I make at the end of the night are me.

So every night when I lay down to go to sleep at night I ask myself, did I make the right decisions for me?

Am I okay with the decisions I make? And not every politician can do that.

I’ve Had My Life Threatened Because We’re Telling The Truth

And here's why: When I tell you I've had every type of threat, every type of threat... I've had my life threatened.

I've had letters to my husband that I'm cheating on him.

I've had threats to my children.

I've had people in my private backyard taking pictures of my swimming pool to say that I'm getting money from somebody to pay for the things that I have.

My husband has gotten threats at work.

But you know what I told somebody over there recently?

And this is very true about me: The more you challenge me, the more stubborn I become because the more I realize that we are right.

You are only going to do these things to try to intimidate me if you are scared that we are coming on the truth.

And that's what happened.

When ‘Experts’ Aren’t Experts

I'm educated by Duquesne. I have a master's degree, but I could tell you more about chemical engineering and chemicals than any person, I think, that's in the field.

And that's because I was determined to learn what was being put in my community, what was going to be put by my residents.

So the people that I see at Cecil Fall Festival, I know what's being put by them.

So back up to the hearings. I want to take a step back because I just realized I forgot to say this.

So one of the companies that was in our area brought an expert witness. I'm not going to use his name because I don't want to call him out, but if you want to look it up, you can. It's online. It's on YouTube.

And quite frankly, I was intimidated at first. He has a Harvard degree. He's going to know all the stuff. He's going to figure it out.

Well, first we got his resume. And I thought, let me look this up. And it turns out his engineering degree or his chemical engineering degree is actually just an online degree, which I've since gotten myself.

So it's just a test you take. You study for it, you take the test, you pass. I called him out on that.

But he doesn't actually have a degree in what he was testifying for. So he started his whole presentation, and I'm taking notes and writing stuff down.

And I asked the very first question, and he started sweating. And I was like, "I might have you."

Turns out, 25 minutes later I really, not to pat myself on the back, but he didn't have a great night that night.

I've never seen anybody run out of a township meeting that quickly.

But I think these are the things that I want to encourage you and people outside of Cecil Township to do.

There is no challenge that's too small or too big. You are not so small that you can't find things, look things up.

There's always resources. I'm happy to help in any way I can.

Protecting The Communities You Live In

But I hope that you understand that even little old me can deal with every threat that comes my way because, at the end of the day, the most important thing is protecting the communities in which we live.

You cannot buy back your health.

You cannot buy back clean water.

You cannot buy back clean air.

So there isn't any amount of money in the world that's going to bring us back to where we are today.

The only thing that we can do is protect those valued resources that we have in the communities in which we live.

So I hope you and other communities in Pennsylvania do those things.

And if I can be of any help, I'm happy to do that.

Thank you. What an amazing panel we have here.

[Editor’s Note: Both Range Resources and MarkWest Liberty Midstream challenged the Cecil Township ordinance in Washington County Court. Read more here.]

PA Shale Gas and Public Health Conference

Recordings of the presentations at the PA League of Women Voters, Physicians For Social Responsibility PA and Duquesne University will be available at the PA Shale Gas and Public Health Conference webpage in the near future.

Background On Setbacks

Legislation has been introduced in the House and Senate to increase setbacks from 500 to 2,500 feet across the state consistent with the 2020 state Grand Jury Report.

Rep. Greg Vitali (D-Delaware) introduced House Bill 1946, which was the subject of a Committee hearing in November. Read more here.

The bill remains in the House Environmental and Natural Resource Protection Committee.

Sen. Steven Santarsiero (D-Bucks) and Sen. Carolyn Comitta (D-Chester) introduced Senate Bill 1083 also increasing setback distances from unconventional shale gas wells.

The bill remains in the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee without action.

EQB Petition

In December, the Environmental Quality Board, which adopts DEP regulations, voted to accept a 358-page rulemaking petition for study first proposed in October 2024 to increase the minimum setback from 500 to 3,281 feet. Read more here.

DEP had already determined the Board had the statutory authority to adopt a change in setbacks before asking the Board to accept the petition for review. Read more here.

PA Senate Republicans Vote To Punish Communities

On May 7, 2025 Republicans on the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee voted to report out legislation-- Senate Bill 102 (Bartolotta-R-Washington, Yaw-R-Lycoming) to punish communities taking steps to protect their residents from the health and environmental impacts of shale gas drilling by doing things like increasing setbacks from well pads. Read more here.

The bill would prohibit municipalities from receiving Act 13 drilling impact fees if they set protective standards on the development of natural gas that “imposes a standard or condition on well development that conflicts with or exceeds those contained” in state law. Read more here.

The legislation was, in fact, prompted by an ordinance adopted by Cecil Township in Washington County.

Sen. Camera Bartolotta (R-Washington), the prime sponsor, represents Cecil Township in the state Senate.

The bill is now in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

(Photos: top- Range Resources Augustine Drill Pad in Cecil Township; Augustine Drill Pad showing scale of operation; bottom- Map of Shale gas wells (red dots), conventional oil and gas wells (blue/green dots) in Cecil Township (DEP Oil & Gas Program); 523 feet from nearest house; Well pad gas flare from bedroom window near Augustine well pad (WTAE). Other photos Courtesy of The Energy Age Blog.)

Resource Links - Cecil Township:

-- Hundreds Of Residents Warn Against Impacts Of Shale Gas Development In Cecil Township, Washington County [PaEN]

-- Cecil Township Supervisors Direct Solicitor To Prepare Ordinance Increasing Setbacks From Shale Gas Well Pads By At Least 2,500 Feet; Another Hearing, Vote Expected Nov. 4 [PaEN]

-- Cecil Township, Washington County Posts Proposed Ordinance Increasing Setbacks From Shale Gas Well Pads Of 2,500 Feet From Homes, Businesses; 5,000 Feet From Schools, Hospitals; Nov. 4 Hearing, Meeting Set [PaEN]

-- Cecil Township Supervisors In Washington County Adopt 2,500 Setback From Shale Gas Well Pads From Homes, Businesses, 5,000 Foot Setback From Hospitals, Schools [PaEN]

-- PA Republican Senators Introduce Bill To Punish Local Elected Officials Who Want To Protect Their Constituents From The Documented Adverse Health, Environmental Impacts Of Shale Gas Development [PaEN]

-- Range Resources And MarkWest Liberty Midstream File Legal Challenges To The 2,500 Foot Shale Gas Facility Setback Ordinance Adopted By Cecil Township, Washington County [PaEN]

-- Cecil Twp. Zoning Hearing Board Dismisses Range Resources Validity Challenge To 2,500 Foot Setback Ordinance For Shale Gas Wells In Washington County [PaEN]

-- Range Resources Files Appeal Of The Dismissal Of Its Zoning Hearing Board Challenge To Cecil Township’s Ordinance Requiring A 2,500 Foot Setback For Shale Gas Wells [8.4.25]

Resource Links - Setbacks:

-- Environmental Quality Board Votes To Accept Petition To Study An Increase In Setback Safety Zones From Shale Gas Wells; And 3 Petitions From Oil & Gas Industry To Change Other Requirements [12.9.25]

-- 500 Feet Isn’t Enough - House Hearing I: Shale Gas Industry Says Setbacks Won’t Protect Residents, Public Health, Environment From Shale Gas Operations, Only ‘Rigorous Oversight’ Will; Standards Have Not Changed In 9 Years [PaEN]