The Lawrenceville company that wants to install a plant that would treat shale gas drilling wastewater at the headwaters of the Allegheny River is threatening legal action against opponents of the proposal.
Epiphany Allegheny LLC has sent “cease and desist” letters to the Seneca Nation of Indians, which has vocally opposed the project; Laurie Barr, an organizer of the citizens organization Save the Allegheny, and Joshua Pribanic and Melissa Troutman, journalist-filmmakers who are the founders of the independent, nonprofit investigative news outlet Public Herald, which has reported on the controversial proposal.
The March 24 letter to Ms. Troutman and Mr. Pribanic, sent by Pittsburgh-based Blank Rome LLP law firm representing Epiphany, accuse them of making “false, destructive and defamatory statements,” about the company, and demands that they remove statements it says are false from a multitude of electronic media outlets and stop making similar statements in the future.
Mr. Pribanic and Ms. Troutman also received a cease-and-desist letter from the attorney representing JKLM Energy, the shale gas drilling firm that would be the wastewater treatment facility’s primary customer. That letter, from attorney James Hankle, of the Pittsburgh law firm Sherrard, German & Kelly, makes similar demands and also threatens legal action if they don’t comply.
“The letters we received from JKLM Energy and Epiphany Allegheny are an attempt to silence us,” said Ms. Troutman in a release issued by Public Herald. “That’s never going to happen.”
Such letters are not legal documents, but can be used to issue a warning to recipients that the sender could initiate legal action if the statements or actions in question continue.
“This is a baseless attempt to thwart open discussion of a controversial waste facility,” Public Herald’s attorney Victor Pribanic said in a release issued by the news outlet.
Epiphany has applied for state permits to accept and treat drilling and fracking wastewater at a first-of-its-kind distillation facility it wants to build adjacent to the Coudersport Area Municipal Authority's sewage treatment plant along the Allegheny River 325 river miles northeast of Pittsburgh in Potter County.
Epiphany has proposed routing its 42,000 gallons a day of discharges, which it says will be free of drilling and fracking chemicals and contaminants, including naturally occurring radiation, through the Coudersport sewage treatment plant.
The municipal authority’s board has not approved that arrangement. And the state Department of Environmental Protection is still considering permits for the facility.
Ms. Barr, who also received cease-and-desist letters from JKLM and Epiphany, said they make some erroneous claims about her publishing of Epiphany’s financial information that was originally disclosed in public permit documents filed with the DEP. She also said the letters seek to stop her from posting her opinions on Facebook.
“I’m not concerned because those opinions are mine and you can’t keep people from having opinions,” Ms. Barr said in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s a constitutional right. It’s called free speech.”
Epiphany, in two news releases issued Monday, denied the letters sent to opponents are an attempt to stifle free speech, stated that any group opposing its Coudersport proposal "has no factual basis for their arguments," and detailed how its two-step distillation technology produces clean water that "meets or exceeds all drinking water standards."
Epiphany's founder and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Joseph is quoted saying that ". . .if the senseless rhetoric from a handful of people are allowed to continue to influence the local leadership, it will undeniably cause more damage to the environment and the community."
A letter sent to Epiphany's attorney by Donald Pongrace, an attorney with the Akin Group who is representing the Seneca Nation, denied the claims made in the cease-and-desist letter and said attempts to stop the his client from commenting on a proposed government permit have a "spurious legal foundation."
"The nation believes its actions are fully protected," Mr. Pongrace wrote. "As a result, the nation has no intention of ceasing and desisting, but rather is likely to expand its efforts in opposition to your client's project in the coming weeks and months."
Seneca President Todd Gates, whose reservation land is 65 miles down river in New York, is unconvinced of the proposed project's safety, and vowed in a news release issued Wednesday to remain an active and vocal opponent.
"We have concerns about the impacts the project could have on the water quality of the Ohi:yo,' or Allegheny River -- impacts that we and many others could be left to live with for generations," Mr. Gates said in the release. "We are not alone in voicing those concerns, and we will not be bullied into silence."
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1983, or on Twitter @donhopey
First Published: March 28, 2018, 7:07 p.m.
Updated: March 28, 2018, 10:04 p.m.
