Philly Gang of Five Win Delay of PA DEP Secretary Reconfirmation
Pennsylvania State Sen. Gene Yaw (Republican from Lycoming County), who serves as Majority Chair of the Senate Environmental Committee, has caved to pressure from five Philadelphia-area Senators (four Democrats, one RINO), to delay a hearing on reconfirming Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) Secretary Patrick McDonnell. The Gang of Five are trying to bully McDonnell into blocking the Mariner East 2 Pipeline project by threatening him with unending investigations, and by threatening his very job. Nice folks.
UPDATE: Sen. Yaw did not cave to pressure from the Gang of Five. Something else has delayed McDonnell’s reconfirmation. See our update below.
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Yesterday the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) voted 5-0 to deny Sunoco Logistics Partners permission to restart construction of Mariner East 2 pipeline in West Whiteland Township in Chester County. Why? Because construction at that location (Shoen Road), along with three other locations, is currently under review in Commonwealth Court. In other words, for the time being (until the court rules), the PUC’s hands are tied.
A group of four Democrat Pennsylvania State Senators and one RINO, all from the Philadelphia region, have requested the Senate committee that will hold a hearing on reconfirming state Dept. of Environmental Protection Secretary Patrick McDonnell to a second term, be put on hold. The gang of five are fighting the completion of the Mariner East 2 pipeline project and believe McDonnell improperly approved and has covered up problems with the project. Don’t you love it when Dems turn on their own?
In June 2018 MDN told you about a plan by Midwest utility company Vectren to build a 900-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant (and a 50-acre solar farm) to replace a retiring coal plant, in Warrick County, Indiana (see 
Yesterday the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Policy Committee held a hearing in Pittsburgh, supposedly on strategies for combating mythical man-made global warming by reducing methane gas emissions. It reality it was an anti-shale crapfest, complete with speeches by radicals from PennFuture and the Environmental Defense Fund.
President Trump is “seriously considering” granting an exemption to the Jones Act, a federal law passed in 1920 that that regulates maritime commerce in the United States. This is seriously good news for the Marcellus/Utica, in fact for every shale play in the U.S. Why? How? Let us explain…
Since January 20, all of Sunoco Logistics’ Mariner East 1 (ME1) pipeline has been shut down on the orders of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (see 
Last Thursday, “more than 300” anti-fossil fuel nutters protested to “demand” that Gov. Cuomo block Williams’ proposed Northeast Supply Expansion (NESE) pipeline project. We have extensively covered NESE and the coming decision by Cuomo’s lapdogs at the Dept. of Environmental Conservation.
Swamp dwellers are recoiling in horror that the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee has just approved a series of bills that restores some sanity in how environmental regulations are made and paid for in the Keystone State. The bills begin, in a small way, to take back control of our system of creating laws, returning authority for making laws to the PA legislature, instead of creating and forcing laws on citizens by unelected, nameless, faceless, swamp-dwelling bureaucrats in regulatory agencies like the Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP). Let us explain.
Last November, a variety of Big Green groups including the Clean Air Council, Widener University Environmental Law and Sustainability Center, eco(n)law LLC and 61 others submitted a “rulemaking petition” (407-page plan) to the Pennsylvania Environment Quality Board (EQB) requesting the Board and PA Gov. Tom Wolf establish a cap-and-trade greenhouse gas emission reduction program to eliminate carbon emissions from major sources by 2052. It’s a bizarre plan, meant to eliminate fossil fuel production and use, including Marcellus Shale production. Yesterday the EQB voted to accept and consider this cockamamie plan.