LWV DelCo Environmental Clearinghouse
Delaware County Environmental Clearinghouse
About 100 people, many of them Trainer and Lower Chichester residents, turned out on Wednesday, Sept. 23, to hear activists present information about how they can oppose a data center proposed for their communities.
MIPC will hold a virtual public meeting July 7 at 6 p.m. to update Aston, Upper Chichester and Bethel homeowners and the public on the current status of the Chelsea Tank farm gasoline leak last winter that spilled 378,000 gallons of fuel from one of its tanks.
MIPC LLC, which operates the Chelsea aviation fuel tank farm in Aston, has temporarily relocated a Bethel family living near the farm’s western fenceline due to “vapor intrusion” into the house. It is evaluating a second home for the same issue.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued an emergency order directing grid operator PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (PJM), and Constellation Energy Corporation, owner of the Eddystone Generating Station, to ensure Units 3 and 4 of the plant remain in operation through May 24. The units were originally slated to shut down on May 31, 2025.
Monroe Interstate Pipeline Company will again hold office hours at the Aston Township building on March 3 following a 378,000-gallon leak at its Chelsea Tank Farm in December.
The next office hours session is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 3 at the Aston facility at 3264 Concord Road.
Monroe Energy’s tank farm in Aston, Bethel and Upper Chichester townships has leaked as much as 278,000 gallons of gasoline into the groundwater at the site since last summer, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection disclosed Dec. 23.
The Trump administration’s anti-renewables policies have left gigawatts’ worth of new solar and wind projects strangled in red tape. So as Congress revisits energy-permitting reform, which it’s tried and failed to pass several times over the past few years, solar companies are taking a stand.
A Dec. 4 letter from 143 of those companies to congressional leaders takes aim at one Trump directive in particular: A July order from the Department of the Interior that requires its head, Doug Burgum, to personally approve every decision the agency makes on renewable energy. In the five months since that change, Burgum hasn’t signed off on any new solar projects on federal lands.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission is involved in a process to allow electric grid operator PJM to charge its ratepayers across 13 states an estimated $70 million a year to keep the Eddystone oil-and-gas power plant operating. The DOE ordered the plant, on the brink of retirement, to keep running for two three-month periods this summer and fall and it is unclear whether the order will be made permanent. The Trump Administration plans to order Forty coal plants across the country to keep operating as well.
Pennsylvania is the nation’s second-largest natural gas producer, yet the commonwealth does not provide sufficient resources to its Department of Environmental Protection to properly regulate this industry.
Gas wells are routinely abandoned, many drillers fail to report their drilling activity as required by law and drilling wastewater is illegally dumped on roadways. In the upcoming state budget, Gov. Josh Shapiro and Pennsylvania’s General Assembly must provide additional staffing for the DEP’s Oil and Gas Program to address these problems.
