Smith Twp Votes Down Plan to Expand MAX Bulger Marcellus Landfill
In a disappointing development, the supervisors of Smith Township (Washington County), PA have voted to turn down MAX Environmental’s request to expand the Bulger landfill they operate in the town (see Marcellus Landfill in Washington Co. Seeks to Expand, Add TENORM). One of the primary customers for the landfill over the past 10 years has been the Marcellus industry–dumping drill cuttings (leftover dirt and rock from drilling) at the landfill. MAX intends to ask the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection for a permit to expand the Bulger facility by 21 acres. They also want to begin accepting technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials, or TENORM, from shale drillers. The first stop is, however, is to get local approval. The DEP wants to see local approval before they consider a state approval. Until now, the word coming from the supervisors is that they were duty-bound to approve the request, as long as “reasonable conditions” were made in the request. The town held several public hearings about the project. Apparently some local loudmouths got to the supervisors and spooked them. At a meeting last Thursday night the supervisors voted 3-0 against approving the request. MAX said they will wait to get the official document, expected today, before deciding on whether or not to litigate (an almost certainty)…
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In January 2016 the Obama U.S. Forest Service (USFS) turned down a request from Dominion’s $5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) project from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina, to pass through two different national forests (see 
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last Thursday granted Rover Pipeline permission to resume horizontal directional drilling (HDD) at four more locations where it had been stopped. One of those locations is drilling under the Ohio River in the Majorsville area. Rover is a $3.7 billion, 711-mile natural gas pipeline that (will eventually) run from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and on to Canada. A large portion of the pipeline began flowing natural gas on Sept. 1st (see 
Good news for Northumberland County: Atlantic Sunrise is rising in your neighborhood. Work on the $3 billion, 198-mile natural gas pipeline project that will run through 10 Pennsylvania counties to connect Marcellus Shale natural gas from northeastern PA with the Williams’ Transco pipeline in southern Lancaster County has begun in Northumberland County. Last week a Williams subcontractor working on that portion of the project gave a tour to a local newspaper. Atlantic Sunrise will pass through approximately 10 miles of Northumberland County, entering from Columbia County and exiting to Schuylkill County. So far, “Everything seems to be going really well” according to the contractor in charge of that portion of the project. They expect to begin welding pipes together by the end of this month…
Five more members of the nutty Lancaster Against Pipelines group have been arrested, including a minor. It’s bad enough putting your own life at risk. We consider it child abuse to put your child’s life in danger by sitting the kid down in front of heavy equipment–in a deluded attempt to stop construction. Just last week we told you about three old ladies who did the same thing (see 
It’s “game on” between the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The DEC had arbitrarily, after more than one year of review, ruled against issuing a federal water crossing permit for a tiny 7.8 mile pipeline Millennium needs to build from its main pipeline to an electric generating plant under construction in Orange County. The power plant is due to be completed in early 2018, and needs a fuel supply. In a historic decision, FERC overruled NY DEC in September (see 
MAX Environmental has operated the Bulger hazardous waste landfill in Smith Township (Washington County), PA since 1958. One of the primary customers for the landfill over the past 10 years has been the Marcellus industry–dumping drill cuttings (leftover dirt and rock from drilling) at the landfill. Earlier this year, MAX sold itself to Altus Capital Partners–a private equity investment firm–for an undisclosed amount (see 
Industrial giant GE (General Electric) wooed and won the hand of Baker Hughes (BH)–the third largest oilfield services company in the world–buying/merging in Baker Hughes with GE’s Oil and Gas division just four months ago (see 
Yesterday Williams filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to upgrade certain facilities in New Jersey along the Williams mighty Transco Pipeline, in order to flow an extra 65,000 dekatherms per day (or 65 million cubic feet) of natural gas to a couple of utility companies that have already signed on the dotted line as customers. The project is called the Transco “Gateway Expansion Project” and will cost roughly $85 million. The upgrades include a new compressor unit at Transco’s existing Compressor Station 303 in Essex County, NJ, a new valve and electric transformer also in Essex County, and equipment upgrades at a metering station in Passaic County, NJ. Both PSEG Power and UGI Energy Services have signed up to receive the extra gas–to be distributed to their customers in the region. The extra 65K dekatherms that will flow because of the upgrades is enough natural gas to meet the daily needs of ~300,000 homes. Here’s the lowdown on this latest Williams project…
Yesterday Patrick McDonnell, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection, went on a field trip and took a tour of the Panda Power Funds Hummel Station natural gas power plant site in Synder County. In February 2015, Panda announced a joint venture with Sunbury Generation to build a whopping 1,124-megawatt plant on the site of a recently retired coal-fired plant near Shamokin Dam in Snyder County (see 
We find it particularly offensive when a liberal/leftist group, like the National Association for the Advancement of [Liberal] Colored People, or NAACP, declares a pipeline project to be racist. The far-left organization made the outrageous claim, in a report they issued yesterday called “Fumes Across the Fence-Line: The Health Impacts of Air Pollution from Oil and Gas Facilities on African American Communities” (full copy below), that Dominion’s $5 billion 594-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) will force black people in low income communities in eastern North Carolina to bear “more than their fair share” of the so-called “risks” posed by the pipeline. ACP is a natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a final approval for ACP in October (see 
Sunoco Logistics Partners has had another “inadvertent return” (i.e. leak of drilling mud) while drilling underground in Delaware County, PA–in a Philly suburb. Every time it happens, no matter how little mud comes out of the ground (even less than a gallon), extremist antis jump up and down and declare an environmental holocaust. What makes this most recent episode different is that a sink hole has opened up near where the drilling mud and water came out of the ground. Not a good situation as the sink hole is not far from a home. The homeowner is not pleased. However, the homeowner is an anti, which makes it even worse. As soon as the mud came out of the ground and the hole appeared, the homeowner called in a swarm of other antis, supposedly to “document” the situation. They were really there to obstruct Sunoco workers who were trying to clean it up and prevent any further damage. Because the antis wouldn’t move their rear-ends out the way, Sunoco had to call in the police to move them. The anti homeowner got all hot-and-bothered that Sunoco had the nerve to call the cops on his anti buds. So far we’ve only found one mainstream media article about the episode, which is quite biased against Sunoco…
Honestly, the Sierra Club launches so many petitions with FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), and so many lawsuits against FERC regarding pipelines, it’s hard to keep them all straight. One of the northeast pipelines the Clubbers oppose is NEXUS, a $2 billion, 255-mile interstate pipeline that will run from Ohio through Michigan and eventually to the Dawn Hub in Ontario, Canada. NEXUS got final approval for the project from FERC in August, the first major pipeline to get approved following a newly restored quorum at FERC (see 
When did little old ladies become climate jihadists? That’s what happened yesterday in Lancaster County when three old ladies, obviously radicalized at some point (maybe they’re old hippies who have always been radicalized?), tied themselves together with a plastic pipe device that needed to be cut away so they could be removed from the spot where they were blocking Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline construction equipment. The entire episode took three hours. When asked nicely by the police to remove the plastic device and unhook themselves, the old ladies refused. So the police had to carefully operate to cut them apart. We figure their stunt easily cost $3,000 in delays–so we sincerely hope Williams sends each of them a bill of $1K to cover the downtime. Plus the old ladies will need to compensate the police and court system for handling their unnecessary case. These three added to the 29 previously arrested in two other episodes now make 32 arrested opposing Atlantic Sunrise–out the “thousands” the clattering Clatterbucks (Mark and Malinda, the radicals spearheading these actions) claim said would rise up to illegally block construction. So much for the big boasts of radical antis…
No doubt being advised and funded by national Big Green groups, a group of backbencher local green groups (Little Green) have taken the first step in what will no doubt turn into a lawsuit to try and stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project from getting built. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved Atlantic Coast, a $5 billion, 594-mile natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina, in October (see 
By our reckoning, Antero Resources’ $275 million wastewater recycling facility in Doddridge County, WV is either already operational, or will be within the next few days (sometime this week). In 2015 Antero hired Veolia Water Technologies Inc. to build a new shale wastewater recycling facility in Doddridge County (see