Published: April 29, 2008 11:13 pm      

It’s tough to ban methadone clinic, township told

EBENSBURG — Cambria Township supervisors learned this week that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to ban a methadone clinic from moving in.

The township planning commission had asked for a legal opinion, partly because of publicity about recent court rulings and partly because a methadone clinic applied in 2000 to locate in the Cambria County Industrial Park.

Township Solicitor Dennis Govachini told supervisors that the courts have found that patients in drug treatment are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that banning such clinics and their patients was illegal.

And despite fears of crime, and two fatal accidents involving clinic patients, Govachini said the courts require objectivity.

Pennsylvania citizens and local governments “must look to objective evidence in the record of any dangers posed by methadone clinics and patients,” Govachini said, in his opinion.

“Arguments that methadone clinics were linked to increased crime, concerns about heavy traffic, loitering, noise pollution, littering, double parking and jaywalking were dismissed (by the court),’’ he said.

Cambria Township has no current applications for a methadone clinic, or similar facility, he said. But the 2000 application was for treating methadone patients within a 15-mile area of Ebensburg from 5:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The reasons for rejecting that application at the time would no longer be valid, the solicitor told supervisors.

“It would appear that we will have to deal with a methadone clinic in light of our existing ordinances,” he said.

Clinics in the region have come under fire in recent years because of these two accidents:

• A 22-year-old Patton woman’s car went out of control July 25 on Route 36, killing two pedestrians. The driver later told police she was on her way home after being treated for heroin addiction at a Clearfield County methadone clinic.

• The owner of a Richland Township clinic was one of three parties sued in the aftermath of a 2004 crash in which its patient was killed while driving home to Altoona after receiving methadone treatment.

State Health Department officials say the state’s 47 clinics are intensely monitored and more clinics are needed.