In an environmental case focused on where hundreds of millions of dollars gained from leasing state land for oil and gas extraction should go, the Commonwealth Court has ruled that a still-in-dispute portion of the funds can be funneled into the state’s general fund—for any use—rather than into the state’s conservation-minded environmental public trust.

The unanimous July 29 Commonwealth Court en banc decision, penned by Judge Michael Wojcik, amounts to a loss for the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation, which in 2012 launched litigation in an effort to make sure that vast monetary sums being made by the state through leasing out forest and park lands to the gas industry was at least directed into the public trust charged with maintaining and conserving Pennsylvania’s rich natural landscape.

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