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Not content to leave Pennsylvania communities with any control over gas drilling within their borders, state legislators have stripped municipalities of their zoning authority under Act 13, choosing energy corporations over the people who elected them. This isn’t exactly new ground for the legislature; indeed, taking away communities’ authority to govern themselves is a decades-old pastime in Harrisburg, one that has shifted into high gear over the past 20 years. The legislature made logging a guaranteed right in all zoning districts back in 1992, giving in to timber interests and eliminating municipalities’ authority to provide for conservation zones.
LATEST NEWS ON MARCELLUS SHALE
Radnor-based PVR is going midstream, planning $380 million in projects that will transport Marcellus natural gas.
Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, an environmental advocacy group, on Monday released what it calls a “plain language” guide to Act 13, Pennsylvania new oil and gas law, the first comprehensive attempt to regulate the industry developing the Marcellus Shale.
Results from additional testing reinforced earlier EPA findings that there was no cause for health concern.
A Pennsylvania judge rejected a bid Friday from gas drillers and legislators to intervene in a legal challenge to the state's recently passed gas-drilling law.
The original owner sold the land to the company but didn't tell residents, who got a month's notice to move.
LATEST NEWS ON MARCELLUS SHALE
MARCELLUS SHALE TOPICS
BATTLE LINES SERIES: A SPECIAL REPORT FROM
- Ambitious U.S. gas pipeline illustrates hazards
- Federal pipeline oversight agency was troubled from the start
Crews worked for months, cutting a trench through hilly fields, woods and past farms for a new natural gas line. But there was trouble and no one to call.
When the owners of the Tennessee natural gas pipeline decided to expand the pipe in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania's northern tier, the federal safety rules they had to follow filled a book.
Dallas Township - an affluent suburb outside Wilkes-Barre - is just one battlefield in a war that has flared in more and more Pa. towns, over the proliferation of the new, high-pressure pipelines that carry Marcellus Shale gas to market.
- Safety cases a secret for utilities, PUC
Last in a four-part series.
There are thousands of miles of 100-year-old, leak-prone, cast-iron pipelines running under Pennsylvania streets. Last in a series.
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HOW "BATTLE LINES" WAS REPORTED
The Marcellus shale drilling boom has tapped a bounty of natural gas worth billions, but Inquirer reporters Joseph Tanfani and Craig R. McCoy found that thousands of miles of high-pressure pipelines carrying the gas to market are being installed with no government safety checks – no construction standards, no inspections, and no monitoring. In fact, state and federal regulators don’t even know where many lines are located.
Marcellus 101
HYDRAULIC FRACTURING
Popularly called “fracking,” the process uses a mixture of water, sand and chemicals to blast open the shale rock, freeing gas trapped in tight pockets to flow to the surface.
Popularly called “fracking,” the process uses a mixture of water, sand and chemicals to blast open the shale rock, freeing gas trapped in tight pockets to flow to the surface.