Archive: Environmental Justice
Late this summer, we asked our members to join us in Washington, D.C, to rally against a dirty side deal made between Democratic leadership and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. The deal for Senator Manchin’s vote on the Inflation Reduction Act was to attach dangerous changes to our permitting system to a must-pass bill that funds […]
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Pennsylvania has at least 200,000 orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells, which each leak up to 419 pounds of methane annually. Their operators left these wells unplugged after extraction, and, usually, it becomes up to the State to plug them using taxpayer money. To help cover the enormous cost, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs […]
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As of July 1, 2022, Pennsylvania became the 12th state to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cap-and-trade program that requires coal-fired power plants to buy an allowance for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit. The allowances are sold at quarterly auctions, and the revenue generated is distributed to the states in […]
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On July 27, the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee approved H.R.2021, the Environmental Justice (EJ) for All Act. The bill is currently sitting before the U.S. House of Representatives for a vote. This landmark piece of legislation would enshrine important protections for minority and low-income communities disproportionately affected by pollution and environmental degradation. It has […]
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The last few years have seen an exciting influx of federal investments in important community infrastructure projects. Water, broadband, energy efficiency, and transportation are all priorities in recent federal funding packages. The question for rural communities like ours, which have lost out on government funding in the past, is this: How do we make sure […]
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On February 11, 2022, PA State Representative Timothy Bonner introduced House Bills (“HBs”) 2338 and 2339 to protect communities from the dangers of landfills. However, the bills’ language will make it so that rural communities bear the brunt of urban and suburban waste. The bills are straightforward. HB 2338 prohibits the new construction of a […]
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