Archive: Environmental Justice
Whitehorn Run in Greene County, PA (Photo Credit: DEP) By Laura Legere by Post-Gazette HARRISBURG — A bill that will make it harder to challenge underground coal mining permits because of their potential to damage streams advanced out of a Senate committee on Monday. The bill by Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, would amend […]
Following U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt’s visit to a local coal mine, the Center for Coalfield Justice and Sierra Club Beyond Coal hosted a press conference where Pennsylvanians gathered to criticize Pruitt’s efforts to put polluter profits ahead of communities health and environment. Speakers criticized Administrator Pruitt and his “back-to-basics” plan for […]
by Kirk Jalbert, Manager of Community-Based Research & Engagement, Fractracker Alliance
and Veronica Coptis, Executive Director
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will be hosting a nine-stop “listening tour” to hear residents’ perspectives on environmental justice (EJ). These sessions begin in the western part of the state on April 12th and 13th. The dates and locations of these meetings can be found here. The DEP will also be accepting written comments, which can be either mailed or emailed to DEP-OEJ@pa.gov.
The EJ listening tour follows on the heels of events in May 2016, when environmental advocacy groups questioned the well pad siting practices oil and gas drilling company Range Resources, causing the DEP to announce it would revisit its EJ policies. Such changes would include reassessing how EJ zones are designated and what kinds of development triggers additional scrutiny by the DEP’s Office of Environmental Justice. We wrote about this story, and detailed how present EJ rules fail to account for oil and gas development in June 2016.
Earlier this spring, Executive Director Patrick Grenter joined other environmental attorneys from around Pennsylvania in condemning recent comments by a high-ranking Range Resources executive regarding that company’s apparent preference to locate shale gas wells away from big homes. Groups also sent a letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection requesting that the state investigate Range Resource’s operations in light of their executive’s comments.