CHARLESTON — The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals has issued a ruling in relation to an almost five-year case involving proposed natural gas drilling in Weirton.

In a ruling issued Wednesday, the Supreme Court found that the appealing party, SWN Production Company, “demonstrated no more than an incidental overlap between the authority of the Department of Environmental Protection … and the authority of the City of Weirton” in relation to determining land use within a municipality’s borders.

The ruling reverses a 2023 decision by the state’s Intermediate Court of Appeals, which decided that only the state has authority over the permitting and regulation of oil and gas operations in the state, while upholding another decision that the ICA had no jurisdiction over a petition for a writ of certiorari filed in the case.

The case stems from a September 2021 decision by Weirton’s Zoning Board of Appeals denying a conditional use permit that would have allowed SWN — then known as Southwestern Energy — to establish a natural gas well pad operation within city limits. The operation had been proposed on approximately 300 acres of property off Park Drive and owned by Brownlee Land Ventures, and included drilling “as many as fourteen different horizontal gas wells.”

The Zoning Board issued its final ruling Oct. 1, 2021, concluding “that SWN’s traffic projections were unreliable and contrary to the city’s plans for traffic in the area. The BZA also found SWN’s application failed to address any impact of its proposed drilling on the underlying aquifer. Moreover, the BZA found ‘commercial development among adjoining properties … would be hindered or discouraged,’ ‘taking into consideration the location, nature and height of buildings … on the site,'” according to Wednesday’s ruling.

SWN filed two separate actions in Brooke County on Oct. 29, 2021, appealing the decision and claiming the state Legislature gave the Department of Environmental Protection sole authority “to regulate the environmental impact of drilling natural gas wells under the Oil and Gas Act … and the Natural Gas Horizontal Well Control Act.”

The city of Weirton, though, claimed authority under the Land Use Planning Act, which “gave municipalities and counties the power to adopt zoning ordinances to regulate the use and orderly development of land within their boundaries to promote the health, safety, comfort, morals and general welfare of the public.”

The Brooke County Circuit Court ruled in August 2022, rejecting SWN’s position and finding no conflict between the state’s environmental laws and the city’s zoning laws.

A separate ruling by the Circuit Court in August 2023 affirmed the Zoning Board’s decision to deny the conditional use permit.

The case was then appealed to the Intermediate Court, which ruled in November 2023 reversing the Brooke Circuit Court’s dismissal of the complaint by SWN, focusing on the regulations of the Horizontal Well Control Act, as well as the DEP’s issuance of a permit to SWN allowing the company to drill in the planned area.

The following April, the ICA “refused to consider” SWN’s appeal of the certiorari decision, noting “that it is a court of limited jurisdiction that expressly did not have appellate jurisdiction over ‘any appeal of a decision or order of another court regarding an extraordinary remedy.'”

In Wednesday’s ruling, the Supreme Court, with the decision delivered by Justice William R. Wooten, pointed to the Land Use Planning Act, in which “the Legislature delegated to local governing bodies the power to plan the orderly development of land within their communities so that ‘the needs of agriculture, residential areas, industry and business be recognized in future growth … Pursuant to the Land Use Planning Act, the purposes of a municipality’s zoning ordinance includes planning for ‘adequate light, air, convenience of access and safety from fire, flood, and other danger … lessening congestion … preserving agricultural land … and promoting the orderly development of land’ within the municipality.”

Such zoning ordinances, the Supreme Court ruled, may include “regulating the use of land and designating or prohibiting specific land uses,” and “dividing the land of the governing body into different zone classifications regulating the use of land.”

The Supreme Court, though, also noted the DEP exercised its authority in granting its application for a drilling permit.

“In these circumstances, the DEP’s permitting authority and the city’s zoning authority touched upon the same object of regulation: SWN’s proposed drilling project located within the city. Contrary to SWN’s position, that overlap does not create an irreconcilable conflict that invalidates or voids the city’s zoning ordinances, wholesale.”