SCRANTON — Pompey Coal Company has filed a lawsuit challenging a Jessup Borough Council zoning ordinance.
In a complaint filed Feb. 1 in the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas, Pompey sued the council and its members regarding the M-1A Business Park Zone, where it “owns significant real estate” designated for manufacturing in the 1995-2010 comprehensive plan.
Pompey sold 65 acres in 2016 to Lackawanna Energy, where it developed a natural gas electric generating plant that went online in January 2019. According to the complaint, that sale “outraged” council members who “vowed to stop any future sale of land” from Pompey to a third party.
In October 2018, Pompey agreed to a $3.5 million sale of another 183 acres to Northpoint Development, which planned to build a distribution center. The complaint alleges the council members worked to foster competing land deals and also rezoned the land Pompey agreed to sell to Northpoint in order to undercut the project, and did so by working outside legally established deadlines and public hearing obligations, thereby violating the company’s due process rights.
Pompey, which seeks a jury trial and wants the current zoning ordinance nullified, is represented by Ridley, Chuff, Kosierowski & Scanlon, of Milford.
The defendant removed the case to federal court on Feb. 28.