EPA Gravy Train Comes to an End – “Researchers” Freak Out
We’ve always thought the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was populated with environmental leftist with an agenda–a mission. And that support for the agency by groups, and even by businesses who come under their regulation, was driven by a warped philosophy. However, two recent bits of information now snap the picture into full focus. The reason the EPA is so zealously defended and promoted by those inside and outside the agency isn’t really about protecting humans and protecting the planet. Oh, that has something to do with it. But the primary motivator is (you guessed it), money. Greed. Graft. Payola. This began to come into focus for us when we ran a post yesterday that stated President Trump will “seek significant budget and staff cuts” and when an aide to Trump on the transition team “suggested it was reasonable to expect the president to seek a cut of about $1 billion from the EPA’s roughly $8 billion annual budget.” What does EPA do with all that money? “About half the EPA’s budget passes through to state and local governments for infrastructure projects and environmental cleanup efforts.” But that’s not all. The EPA also funnels money to researchers and even to private businesses in the form of grants. In other words, the EPA has been a gravy train for a good many people, and the train is about to come to a screeching halt…
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Finally, something is being done about draining the swamp that has been (until now) a rogue, out-of-control federal Environmental Protection Agency. As we previously reported, Trump could not have picked a better person to head the agency than Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (see 
Recently a biased editorial ran in the biased Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, taking aim at methane. The editorial, penned by Brian O’Neill, misrepresented the facts about methane in PA, in an attempt to garner support for onerous new regulations put forward by Gov. Wolf’s Dept. of Environmental Protection. State Sen. Guy Reschenthaler, R-Jefferson Hills (representing parts of Allegheny County and Washington County), responded with his own editorial. To their credit, the Post-Gazette published it. Reschenthaler said the air is actually getting cleaner in PA, not dirtier, thanks to Marcellus Shale gas. And the new regulations being pedaled by Wolf will not make things better environmentally. The only thing the new regs will do is kill jobs…
As we reported yesterday, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) chairman Norman Bay has his knickers in a twist over getting a demotion by President Trump, who has named another sitting FERC Commissioner, Cheryl LaFleur, to become the chairwoman of FERC (see 
Last week President Trump issued a pair of executive orders meant to speed up approval for the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipeline projects (see 
Can you smell it? We sure can. It’s called hope. Not even a full week in the new Trump Administration, hope can be found everywhere. Liberal Democrats still aren’t sure what hit them. Let us help. It’s competence. It’s someone who gives a damn about the average American. It’s someone who believes the country, as it was founded, is the best country in the world. Donald J. Trump. He’s blown into Washington, DC like a hurricane and things are changing so fast most of us can’t keep up. Case in point: On Tuesday, Trump’s second full day on the job (last Friday and the weekend don’t count), Trump signed an Executive Order “Expediting Environmental Reviews and Approvals For High Priority Infrastructure Projects.” What are ‘high priority infrastructure projects’? A document has leaked, originally compiled by Trump’s transition team, of 50 ‘Emergency & National Security Projects’ that are infrastructure projects–projects the Trump Administration believes should be worked on immediately. Project #20 in the list is Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), a $5 billion, 594-mile natural gas pipeline that will stretch from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina. Number 20! How cool is that? No, this doesn’t mean Trump can simply order it approved like some sovereign or tinpot dictator. Our rules and laws must be followed. What it does mean is that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will now receive enormous pressure to quit dragging its feet and to “fast track” the review for ACP. It means hope on now on the horizon…
The issue of “setbacks” has always been a contentious issue when it comes to oil and gas drilling. A setback is the distance from a well to nearby structures–like water wells, homes, schools, whatever. In Pennsylvania the state law requires a minimum of 500 feet between a well and nearby structures. But here’s the thing: Do you measure the distance (as drillers maintain) from the bore hole drilled into the ground? Or from the edge of the well pad? A pad is typically 3-5 acres, and if you measure from the edge of the pad, the “actual” distance from the well to a nearby structure may be 1,000 feet instead of 500 feet. Some argue that measuring from the edge of the pad makes more sense–to protect nearby residents from noise, lights, air emissions, etc. But drillers in some locations are hamstrung, especially if the the location where they drill is on a slope or other tough terrain. Measuring from the edge of the pad may mean not drilling at all. It is that very issue now being debated in Murrysville, in Westmoreland County, PA (near Pittsburgh). It is a wisdom of Solomon kind of issue…
In May 2015 Obama’s rogue Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) along with the Obama U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) released a finalized rule clarifying what “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) means vis a vis what can be regulated under the federal Clean Water Act (see 
Although antis have tried to block major pipeline upgrades in the northeast/New England region, Spectra Energy continues to have success with building and completing its projects. Recently Spectra’s Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) project, which built ~37 miles of new pipeline and half a dozen new compressor stations along the Alogonquin Gas Transmission pipeline, went into service (see 
National Fuel Gas Company (NFG), the Buffalo-based utility giant with both a drilling subsidiary (Seneca Resources) and a midstream/pipeline subsidiary (Empire Pipeline) filed an application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in March 2015 for a pipeline project they call Northern Access 2016 (later renamed to simply Northern Access Project, dropping the “2016” part). The $455 million project includes building 97 miles of new pipeline along a power line corridor from northwestern Pennsylvania up to Erie County, NY. The project also calls for 3 miles of new pipeline further up, in Niagara County, along with a new compressor station in the Town of Pendleton (see 
On Monday the New Jersey Pinelands Commission, which oversees a stand of scrub pines in South Jersey, held a public hearing to listen to comments on a plan to build a 22-mile pipeline through the scrub pines, burying it alongside the road so as to not disturb any spindly trees. The pipeline will supply clean-burning natural gas to a power plant currently fed by coal, cleaning up the air and lowering CO2 emissions. But dunderheads in the area are still opposed–largely incited by radical environmental groups like the NJ Sierra Club and the odious Food & Water Watch, who spread lies about the project. So many people turned up for the meeting, it maxed out the meeting room of 260 and some had to wait outside in the rain (which didn’t sit well with the pampered snowflakes). Predictably many who showed up wanted to go on record as opposed to the project. Isn’t that always the case? It’s easy to motivate people to attend a meeting when they’re against something–much harder to attract people who support something. At any rate, the surprising thing about yesterday’s meeting were the many people who turned out to support the pipeline. Also predictable, at least one anti (from the odious Food & Water Watch) couldn’t contain herself and had to be ejected for disrupting the meeting…
President Trump is wasting no time in correcting the mistakes of the Obama Administration. Yesterday Trump signed a pair of Executive Orders meant to restart and advance the XL Keystone Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline projects. The orders include a requirement that the pipes manufactured for the projects be manufactured right here at home, in the U.S. The orders in no way require the projects to get completed, they are simply meant to help clear regulatory hurdles so the projects’ builders can get moving again. Predictably the action is making radical fossil fuel haters apoplectic…
PennEast Pipeline is a very important $1 billion, 118-mile, primarily 36-inch pipeline that will get built from Dallas (Luzerne County), PA to Transco’s pipeline interconnection near Pennington (Mercer County), NJ. It will feed local utilities and power generation plants along its route. In April 2016 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees permitting for the pipeline, told PennEast the agency would extend the amount of time they are taking until December 2016, rather than the original target of August, to complete their environmental review (see