On Tuesday, residents of Athens, Ohio, overwhelmingly asserted their rights to clean air, water and to local self-governance, banning fracking and frack wastewater injection wells through the adoption of a Community Bill of Rights. They joined a growing number of communities across the U.S. that are uniting to assert their rights to protect themselves and create a sustainable future.

Athens residents adopted their rights-based fracking ban with 78% of the vote. They join Yellow Springs, Oberlin, Mansfield, and Broadview Heights, Ohio, which also adopted Community Bills of Rights banning fracking, beginning in 2012.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, or CELDF, assisted in the drafting of Athens’s rights-based initiative, which codifies community rights to self-governance and a healthy environment, and the rights of nature to exist and flourish – calling fracking a violation of those rights.

The local Bill of Rights also contains provisions to protect the rights established within them – including eliminating the power of corporations to use their corporate “rights” to override the Community Bill of Rights. Through grassroots organizing and public interest law, CELDF has now helped more than 150 communities across the country ban shale gas drilling and fracking, factory farming and water privatization, and eliminate corporate “rights” when they violate community and nature’s rights.

Ohio residents became concerned about fracking and wastewater injection wells when those activities started entering the state several years ago. The fracking process produces millions of gallons of toxic wastewater, which corporations are disposing of through underground injection wells.

Fracking and injections wells have been tied to earthquakes within Ohio and elsewhere, and the contamination of drinking water. And while many claim that shale gas is a “cleaner” fuel than coal or oil, studies are finding that fracking is a major source of methane emissions exacerbating global warming.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the county of Mendocino, Calif., said "yes" to Measure S, passing the first rights-based fracking ban in the Golden State. According to Ben Price, a national organizing director with CELDF, which partnered with Global Exchange helping to push the initiative, two-thirds of residents in the northern California county adopted the Mendocino County Community Bill of Rights Fracking and Water Use Initiative.

California’s unending shortage of water and its location – situated above major earthquake faults – make fracking of significant concern to residents. The fracking process requires millions of gallons of water, and fracking and frack wastewater injections wells, used to store the toxic wastewater produced from fracking, have been tied to earthquakes in Ohio and Oklahoma.

CELDF lent its support to the county not only helping draft the community rights law, but providing education through its Democracy School training held in Mendocino for residents last spring. Measure S establishes the rights of the people of Mendocino County to a healthy environment, including clean air and water, and the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish, and secures the rights of residents to local self-governance. Fracking is banned as a violation of those rights.

The extraction or sale of local water for use in fracking anywhere in the state is also banned, along with the dumping of toxic frack waste. Further, the measure bans the transfer of offshore fracking oil or waste through the county.

“It is a huge win," said Shannon Biggs, who helped organize the ballot effort through Global Exchange. "With the passage of Measure S, residents in Mendocino County made history as the first California community to adopt a Community Bill of Rights, placing their rights above corporate interests."

"Residents see enactment of this ordinance as the first step in asserting their right to local self-government, and a rejection of the idea that their community will be a sacrifice zone for corporate profits. This is just a beginning for the community rights movement in California.”

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And in news elsewhere, Gregg Levine reports for Al Jazeera America that residents of Denton, Texas, also voted to ban hydraulic fracturing:

Denton, Texas, became the first city in the Lone Star State to ban hydraulic fracturing. The grassroots ballot initiative garnered roughly 59 percent of the vote, which prohibits the controversial drilling method right in the middle of the Barnett Shale, one of the nation’s largest gas fields.

"This is a victory for the citizens of the city of Denton. For our families, for our health, for our homes, and for our future,” said Cathy McMullen, President of Frack Free Denton, a citizens’ coalition organized in opposition to gas drilling interests.

Denton is a city in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex with 121,000 people, 270 natural gas wells and, till Tuesday, few drilling restrictions. Area residents who live near the wells have complained of nosebleeds, headaches and nausea, which they attribute to byproducts of the fracking process.

The Denton city council had the opportunity to pass a fracking ban itself in July, but by a 5-2 vote pushed the decision on to the November ballot.

Oil and gas companies, concerned that Denton could start a wave of similar initiatives across the state, poured nearly $700,000 into a multi-platform campaign to defeat the initiative — nearly 10 times the amount raised by pro-ban forces.

The industry has vowed to challenge the new law in the courts, arguing that Denton cannot supersede the Texas Land Commissioner and the Railroad Commission, the state bodies with authority to grant drilling permits.

State legislators have also said they would introduce legislation that would prevent cities like Denton from enforcing fracking bans.

But Denton Mayor Chris Watts vowed his town would work to keep the new law in place, telling the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he and the city council would “exercise the legal remedies that are available to us should the ordinance be challenged.”