Attorney David Brooman, with the law firm of High Swartz, provided Lowhill supervisors with an update on the warehouse litigations during their June 12 meeting.

Brooman said he thought this would be good time to give a litigation report because it’s been three months since he gave his last report.

Brooman said the first is CRG Betz Court and there are a couple of cases.

“The Commonwealth Court ruled on June 3 that the preliminary plan was deemed approved and remanded the preliminary plan back to the Common Pleas Court,” he stated. “The board of supervisors denied CRG’s final plan. CRG appealed the denial to the Common Pleas Court. These two cases were consolidated at the request of CRG. CRG filed a motion to conduct discovery and was granted discovery.”

He said the supervisors, Jill Seymour, township secretary and Mike Siegel, township manager, are looking through the discovery request for responsive documents and it is a little bit of challenge because the system that Lowhill Township uses and used is a challenge.

Brooman added these two CRG cases are in Common Pleas Court before Judge Thomas Caffrey.

“The other CRG development since my last report is CRG filed an appeal with the Environmental Hearing Board. The appeal challenges the Department of Environmental Protection denial of CRG’s private request to order supervisors to approve CRG’s sewage facilities plan,” he said. “Lowhill Township has intervened in CRG’s appeal. CRG and DEP are currently in settlement negotiations.”

Brooman said the next series of cases is Core5 and concerns the former Trammell Crow site.

“The final land development plan was denied by the board of supervisors and appealed by Core5 to the Court of Common Pleas. The Court of Common Pleas ruled in Core5’s favor and overturned the final decision,” Brooman stated. “An adverse ruling was appealed to Commonwealth Court by Lowhill Township. An oral argument was held on April 8 of this year. Interesting oral argument and at the end of it, Judge Michael H. Wojcik suggested that the parties meet to see if they could settle.”

He said both Fitzpatrick, Lentz and Bubba attorneys on behalf of Core5 and counsel for the township agreed.

The parties met on May 21 with Judge Bonnie Leadbetter, who is a retired Commonwealth Court judge and spent about 3-4 hours trying to settle, Brooman added.

“Settlement was unsuccessful,” Brooman stated. “The matter is back up in Commonwealth Court for a ruling.”

Brooman said the other Core5 case is Kernsville.

“Core5 tried to overturn the decision because of supervisor Dietrich, who was determined by Judge Michele Varricchio to be what is called a de facto officer even though he wasn’t properly elected he did properly vote because of a lot of factors that lead to basically color of title to the office and Judge Varricchio had no problem in her finding, however, she sent it to Commonwealth Court because she wasn’t quite sure of her own ruling and judges are permitted to do that, but it has to be approved by the Commonwealth Court,” he said. “The long and short of it that has been sitting there for quite a while, since Feb. 3 without a ruling, so I think that’s good.”

Brooman said she issued what he considered to be a well thought out ruling.

“The other development I think since I gave a litigation report is what we call the waterline litigation,” Brooman stated. “If you recall there was a letter signed with LCA suggesting that they would bring water into these three warehouses and the township rescinded that. Core5 and CRG have filed action in Common Pleas Court. They are not consolidated. CRG is moving a little faster than Core5.”

The board also briefly discussed the ACT 537 study.

Curt Dietrich began the discussion by saying the board held a quickly called meeting to apply for a grant before asking Ryan Christman, township engineer with Keystone Consulting Engineers, to give the board an update on the ACT 537 study.

“Sure, the grant application was submitted May 30 to meet the deadline. A decision won’t be determined until September, October, later in the year, but with that we did hit a big snag in getting the plan update off the ground because we can’t perform any work until that grant is approved,” he stated. “We can’t spend any money, the township or otherwise until that grant is approved, so it sets us back obviously many months.”

He said the first step would have been to go out and do the field survey and late fall is not the best time of year to be doing that, so he said he would call the Department of Environmental Protection the next day to get an extension of time for their deadline.

Christman added he will also try to get some feedback from them as far as if the township waits for spring next year to start doing the field survey.

“So, that’s where that’s at, kind of wait and see right now but I will try to get that deadline extension from DEP tomorrow,” he stated.

Dietrich comments.

“I think it’s important that DEP grant us that extension,” he said. “This matter is substantial. It’s a 50% grant and the cost of this ACT 537 study is going to be significant. I think there was an estimate of $125,000 for all the necessary work to meet DEP’s requirements.”

Dietrich said hopefully DEP will acknowledge that the grant application is in because the township is applying for a grant for a study that is extensive.

“They want it to be extensive, it’s going to be costly and in order to do that they do offer grants so I would hope they would grant us that extension and they would put that in writing so we have it,” Dietrich stated.

“I think as long as they know we’re moving forward and the grant application is in, hopefully we are successful,” Christman added.