PA DEP Holds its First CPP “Listening Session”
On Tuesday the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection held it’s first “listening session” to consider which creative ways they will cut the economic throat of the state by attempting to comply with nonsensical carbon standards set by our Dear Leader, Barack H. Obama, via his so-called Clean Power Plan (see PA Anti-Fossil Fuel Groups Praise Wolf/Quigley for Supporting CPP). The master of ceremonies for the three-hour event was none other than the PennFuture Secretary of the DEP himself, John Quigley, who said Obama’s nutty standards are “ambitious, but achievable.” Most of the 27 speakers were a stacked deck–there to support the CPP standards. There were, however, a few voices of common sense and reason among the blithering idiots…
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A major defeat for Pennsylvania’s anti-drilling groups, including THE Delaware Riverkeeper, was just handed down by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court in a Lycoming County zoning case. In Gorsline v. Board of Supervisors of Fairfield Township, anti-drilling neighbors, including Brian and Dawn Gorsline, Paul and Michele Batkowski and others (collectively “Gorsline”) sued to stop a conditional use permit granted by Fairfield Township to allow Inflection Energy to construct a well pad on the property of Donald and Eleanor Shaheen. The case was weak, but the lowest court in the PA court system–the Court of Common Pleas (i.e. county court)–said the ninny nanny neighbors had a right to strip away the Shaheen’s property rights to allow drilling on their own property. The PA Commonwealth Court obliterated the faulty reasoning of the lower court and has, significantly, redefined how courts should interpret the results of the Act 13 zoning lawsuit that allows local municipalities the right to restrict shale drilling. The Commonwealth Court decision (full copy below) has kicked the legal legs out from under those seeking to use an amicus brief filed by THE Delaware Riverkeeper in the Act 13 case…
Pennsylvania’s shale drilling industry is pushing back against the last minute changes made to PA’s oil and gas regulations commonly known as Article 78. In April the Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) turned up the heat on newly-elected Gov. Tom Wolf and PennFuture Dept. of Environmental Protection Secretary John Quigley with a scorching hot letter (see 
In February MDN told you that Spanish oil giant Repsol was accelerating plans to build an LNG export terminal on the coast of Saint John, Newfoundland (see 
In a shameless act of political pandering, the president of the Massachusetts State Senate, Stan Rosenberg (Democrat), ran his own version of a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) scoping hearing. Such hearings, while meant to elicit useful information about where a pipeline should, and should not, run, usually devolve into freak shows by anti-drilling zealots who parade and preen before the cameras and microphones–making fools of themselves. We’ve seen it many times before. So Rosenberg, apparently not satisfied that there’s not a FERC hearing every week where anti-drilling zealots in Mass. can gripe and moan and complain, set up his own faux session. He “listened” to some 60 people complain about the proposed Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct pipeline. Stan says he’s going to hand deliver transcriptions of the entire sordid affair to FERC, personally…
Ohio and 15 other states sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop implementation of Obama’s draconian coal and natural gas-killing Clean Power Plan while their larger lawsuit challenging the entire CPP winds its way through court (see 
Grant Township in Indiana County, PA has a problem: They’ve hired a potty mouth lawyer to represent them who has a HUGE conflict of interest. Grant’s town attorney is also the lawyer for (and executive director of) the litigious and extreme left-wing group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a group committed to ending the use of fossil fuels. We’ve written plenty about the antics of the CELDF, including their lawsuit on behalf of an ecosystem (see 
Natural gas customers in Philadelphia could have had all of the outdated and unsafe pipes belonging to the aging Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) pipeline network replaced within 5-10 years, paid for by UIL Holdings Corporation, a Connecticut-based gas and electric utility holding company that offered to buy PGW in a deal brokered by Democrat Mayor Michael Nutter. But the corrupt Philadelphia City Council torpedoed the deal (see 
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has buckled to pressure from politicians to schedule yet another scoping hearing in New Hampshire (the third such hearing in tiny NH, the 14th overall), and extend the period for public comments, for the Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct pipeline project that would bring much-needed supplies of abundant, cheap and clean-burning Marcellus/Utica Shale gas to New England (see 
Pennsylvania anti-drillers from a local chapter of the Izaak Walton League, a so-called conservation organization, attempted a smear job on the Marcellus Shale industry–and it’s come back to bite them. The Izaak Walton gang has been testing water from Ten Mile Creek that runs through Washington and Greene counties in western PA for the past four years. Last year the League raised an alarm that there are high levels of radiation and other nasty things in the creek. The League immediately started pointing a finger at the Marcellus industry, accusing drillers of illegally dumping untreated wastewater in the creek (see 
Ivan and Kathy Dubrasky are anti-drillers located in Pulaski Township (Lawrence County), PA, just across the border from Ohio and close to Youngstown. They recently hosted a tiny anti-drilling rally at their property (see 
A very old and trite but true saying: Q: How do you know when a politician, like NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is lying? A: When he opens his mouth. Our illustrious man-child governor was in Syracuse yesterday to drop off a bag of money with $50 million, and an impertinent reporter had the gall to ask His Lordship about the secession rally held in Chenango County on Sunday (see