PA DEP’s failure to explain their water testing policies and use of suite codes continues to leave concerned public demanding answers

Harrisburg, PA – Mystery, questions and concern continue to surround Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (PADEP) water testing and reporting policies related to suspected impacts from Marcellus Shale natural gas operations. These issues were originally revealed in the Kiskadden vs. PADEP deposition of Taru Upadhyay, technical director of DEP’s Bureau of Laboratories—and described widely in subsequent news stories regarding the use of suite codes, which result in only partial test results being sent to homeowners.

Clean Water Action is proud to announce the release of its report “Greener Communities”, a copy of which can be found here. The report focuses on the ordinances of 25 municipalities in the Brandywine Creek watershed in ChesterCounty, and how the municipalities’ land use rules affect stormwater runoff.

The regulators are not doing their job again.  And - together - we must do something about it. 

The Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SRBC) has the job of protecting the Susquehanna.  Clean Water Action needs your support in a vital campaign to get the Susquehanna State Governors (Corbett, Cuomo, O'Malley) to protect the Susquehanna from the negative effects of Fracking.  The SRBC, which is run by Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and the Federal Government, is supposed to be the chief protector of the Susquehanna River.

The SRBC is not taking that responsibility seriously. Send a letter to Governor Corbett and the US Army Corps of Engineers and demand that they protect the Susquehanna!

PORTAGE, Pa. -- Randy Moyer hasn’t been able to work in 14 months.

He’s seen more than 40 doctors, has 10 prescriptions to his name and no less than eight inhalers stationed around his apartment.

Moyer said he began transporting brine, the wastewater from gas wells that have been hydraulically fractured, for a small hauling company in August 2011. He trucked brine from wells to treatment plants and back to wells, and sometimes cleaned out the storage tanks used to hold wastewater on drilling sites. By November 2011, the 49-year-old trucker was too ill to work. He suffered from dizziness, blurred vision, headaches, difficulty breathing, swollen lips and appendages, and a fiery red rash that covered about 50 percent of his body.

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The shale gas drilling industry wants to use barges to move its potentially toxic wastewater across rivers and lakes to disposal sites across the country, but the U.S. Coast Guard must first decide whether it's safe.

"It may be hazardous," said Commander Michael Roldan, chief of the Coast Guard's Hazardous Material Division, stressing the word "may."

He told Public Source, an independent, nonprofit news organization based in Pittsburgh, that the waste can't currently be shipped by barge.

(Warren County, PA)— The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to push forward with the permitting of two proposed Underground Injection Control (UIC) wells in Columbus Township, Warren County, Pennsylvania despite considerable public protest and concern over permit deficiencies. EPA Region III officials approved permits earlier this week for the Bittinger #1 and #4 wells to start receiving highly-pressurized injections of shale gas wastewater, placing area sources of drinking water in a contamination danger zone.

Read the report

Formed in 2002, the Pennsylvania Campaign for Clean Water is a coalition of over 140 environmental, conservation, sporting, and religious groups from all corners of the state that speaks in one voice in support of federal and state policies to protect and restore PA’s water resources. Learn more here.

Combating air pollution in Allegheny County, organizing with residents in the municipalities across the Ohio River to reduce the pollution coming from Neville Island and ensure that industry is being a "good neighbor is just some of our work to make air cleaner in Allegheny County.

Find out more at the Bucket Bridgade.

Did you know raw sewage goes into our rivers almost every time it rains in Allegheny County? Disgusting, right? That’s why we’re required to fix the problem.

Clean Water Action has joined forces with a coalition of groups to make sure the plan put in place to correct the issue is also the most beneficial to our region. We’re fighting for a plan that includes green infrastructure to not only fix the sewage problem, but bring long-term jobs to our region and beautify communities, making them places where people want to live, work and shop.