On September 29, 2015, the Third Circuit held in Nat’l Parks Conservation Ass’n v. U.S. E.P.A., ((2015 WL 5692605 (3d Cir. Sept. 29, 2015))), that an air pollution control plan submitted by Pennsylvania to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) was insufficient in protecting against pollution. The appeal was filed […]
Miscellaneous
The Solar Eclipse to Strain Europe’s Electricity Supply
The ensuing solar eclipse has the potential to cause rolling blackouts around Europe. The not-so-evident reason: Solar energy in Europe has risen drastically. The last eclipse that would be comparable to this occurred in 1999, where much of the power was generated using nuclear power and fossil fuels. Now, many […]
Striking the Right Balance
On March 9, 2015, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (“DEP”) announced the latest draft revisions of the Environmental Protection Performance Standards at Oil and Gas Well Sites in an effort to continue balancing the benefits of drilling with some of the potential risks that drilling poses to citizens of […]
DEP Proposes Agreement to Ensure the Continued Recovery of Dunkard Creek
On November 1st, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection published a Notice of Proposed Agreement, page 6994, to clean up parts of Dunkard Creek, a small river that runs through Greene County, Pennsylvania and Monongalia County, West Virginia. The agreement between the DEP and Dana Mining Company of Pennsylvania, LLC, […]
The Potential Dangers of Hydraulic Fracturing and Induced Earthquakes
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracing, is relatively new to the Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio region with most wells being drilled in the past decade. The act of hydraulic fracturing to extract oil and gas involves drilling deep into the ground and pumping water and chemicals into fractures in rock formations, […]