Franklin Twp, PA Wants Law to Ban All Fracking

You may recall that once-upon-a-time seven selfish towns in Pennsylvania sued the state after the legislature passed the Act 13 law that would create uniform zoning regulations to govern shale drilling. The towns (Robinson, Nockamixon, South Fayette, Peters, Cecil, Mount Pleasant, and the Borough of Yardley) eventually won their case, in 2013 (see PA Supreme Court Rules Against State/Drillers in Act 13 Case).
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The voters in Youngstown have finally, after seven years, had enough of the the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) and its useful idiots who have tried, and failed, to get a so-called Community Bill of Rights ballot measure (i.e. frack ban) passed. Last November Youngstown voters rejected the CELDF measure for the eighth time (see
Last year the Pennsylvania House of Representatives debated and voted to approve a slate of five bills aimed at fixing not only the slowmo way the DEP approves shale permits, but also roll back some of the egregious regulatory overreach that now exists in PA (see
The town of East Goshen, in Chester County, PA (near Philadelphia) has a noise ordinance in place from 10 pm to 7 am. Sunoco Logisitics, working on installing a section of the Mariner East 2 pipeline through the township, requested an exemption to allow them to work all night long. Their argument is that once you start pulling pipe through the hole you’ve just drilled, you can’t just stop. Last week the town supervisors voted against granting the exception. Shhh, quiet after 10.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) recently pulled together a report (“findings”) that were circulated to Congress, making the case for a large-scale natural gas liquids (NGL) storage and trading hub in the Marcellus/Utica region. No doubt this report was a response to moves by the radical left to prevent such a hub from receiving any kind of federal loan guarantees.

In April, Pennsylvania State Rep. Mike Turzai, Speaker of the House, and a group of conservative Republicans, announced a plan for the future of PA (see 

We’ve written plenty about President Obama’s so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP), a plan to force electric generators to convert to using more “renewable” sources of energy and less fossil fuels (see
There, now that’s the DRBC (Delaware River Basin Commission) we know and expect–obsequiously bowing before the likes of THE Delaware Riverkeeper and her environmental cousin, the Sierra Club. In June the DRBC approved a request by New Fortress Energy to build a $96 million 1,600-foot-long pier on the Delaware River (see 
Two of the eight Pennsylvania House bills that are part of an initiative called Energize PA have been voted out of the PA House State Government Committee. Both bills, House Bill (HB) 1106 and 1107, are aimed at streamlining and speeding up the permitting process at the semi-dysfunctional Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). Enviro-leftists are spitting nails and hopping mad. These bills have momentum and now go to the full House for a vote.
In February 2017, Spire, a natural gas utility company based in St. Louis, Missouri, filed an official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to build the Spire STL Pipeline, a 65-mile, 24-inch diameter pipe that will flow 400 million cubic feet (MMcf) per day of yummy Marcellus/Utica gas from the Rockies Express (REX) pipeline to St. Louis (see
Nice try, but no cigar for Plainfield Township in Northampton County. The Plainfield Board of Supervisors last week passed a new zoning ordinance that prevents pipelines (and cell phone towers, and solar farms, and wind mills, and and and) from being built near or under the 1.5 miles of the Appalachian Trail as it passes through their township. Thing is, when it comes to pipelines (like PennEast Pipeline) that are federally regulated, Plainfield can’t stop it. Their ordinance isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.