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In a ruling made Nov. 18 but released to the public Wednesday, Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt reversed the ruling of Lancaster Judge James P. Cullen, who last December rejected a developer's bid to gain approval for the shopping center.
In that same ruling, Cullen said a deal the developer cut with Drumore Township over the property in February 2007 involving $170,000 was now void; however, under Leavitt's decision released Wednesday that ruling also was reversed.
Calls to the developer, Plymouth Meeting-based Wolfson-Verrichia Group, on the matter Wednesday evening were not returned.
Ron Cariello, president of Quarryville-based Save Our Rural Community Environment, said his group "did not yet wish to make a comment at this time."
Calls to the township's attorney, Kim Carter Paterson of the Lancaster law firm Blakinger Byler & Thomas, were not returned.
In the 16-page ruling, Leavitt lays out the history of the complicated case, beginning with the developer's application to build the shopping hub in May 2003.
After three years of legal proceedings in which township hearing officer Matt Creme heard testimony relating to the shopping center's impact on the largely rural area of Drumore and surrounding townships, Creme ruled against Drumore Crossings based on the proposed shopping center's controversial sewer, known as a Biological Engineered Single Sludge Treatment System, which disposes of treated effluent by drip irrigation.
Wolfson-Verrichia then appealed Creme's ruling to Cullen, who supported Creme. Leavitt, however, appears to take issue with Cullen's reasoning, with much of her argument boiling down to the use of a single word: "system."
According to Leavitt, because the developer is still at the stage of receiving conditional use approval for the proposed shopping center, Wolfson-Verrichia does not have to identify a specific sewage treatment system in its application but instead only show that the shopping center would include a method of sewage treatment and disposal that's acceptable to the state's Department of Environmental Protection.
Therefore, Leavitt ruled, Creme and Cullen's emphasis on problems with the specific BESST system — rather than simply having a general method of accepted sewage disposal — was "misplaced."
"An applicant cannot be required to provide specific engineering design details of its proposed development at the conditional use stage," Leavitt writes. "Further, whether a specific system … will be approved is a decision for DEP, not the hearing officer."
The ruling goes on to state that, because Drumore Township supervisors voted on July 27, 2004, to hand final approval powers on the conditional use hearing to Creme, supervisors were free to enter into a controversial 11th-hour agreement with Wolfson-Verrichia which, in exchange for a $170,000 remuneration in legal fees — as well as several architectural concessions — Drumore's local government would no longer fight Wolfson-Verrichia Group over the proposed shopping hub.
"For the foregoing reasons," Leavitt's ruling states, "we reverse the order of the trial court."
In a recent interview on the Drumore Crossings controversy, Robert W. Hallinger, a lawyer in the Lancaster law firm of Appel & Yost who is representing several Drumore Township residents in the case, said the only governing body to whom residents could appeal a Commonwealth Court decision is the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Drumore Township supervisors are expected to discuss the Drumore Crossings case at their next township meeting, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Dec. 3 at the Drumore Township office, 1675 Furniss Road, Drumore.
