Keep Tap Water Safe

Political Powder Kegs For Pennsylvania’s Other Sixty-Five Counties

A 6-year unconventional gas drilling moratorium in the little-known South Newark Basin…  Few saw it coming. Iris Bloom did. She immediately mobilized Protecting Our Waters and its allies to help stop the measure which was slipped into the Pennsylvania Fiscal Code Bill, HB1263, in the eleventh hour. Laura Olsen reports on Sen. Chuck McIlhinney’s [R-10th, Bucks] successful, powder-keg provision in Oil and Gas Permits on Hold in Southeastern Pennsylvania in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Bloom’s email alert, sent early Saturday afternoon, was the first many had heard of this extraordinary measure. It was extraordinary because McIllhinney is the among the self-same legislators who, only four months ago, crammed The Marcellus Shale Act down the Commonwealth’s collective throat – all in the name of “consistency” and “uniformity.” Now, McIllhinney is seeking exemption from the very zoning restrictions he would impose on the rest of Pennsylvania. (more…)