Mariner East pipeline construction (Jeremy Long, Lebanon Daily News) |
Leg
Laura Legere reports for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Pennsylvania environmental regulators were aware for days that collapsed soil along the path of the Mariner East pipeline construction project had exposed a parallel pipeline in Chester County this month before they informed safety regulators at another agency, according to testimony at a state Senate hearing on Tuesday.
Instead, safety inspectors with the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission first learned about the sinkholes from local residents on March 3.
Four days later, the commission ordered an emergency shutdown of the exposed pipeline, known as Mariner East 1, to avoid potentially “catastrophic results” until the ethane, butane and propane pipeline’s stability can be confirmed.
Domenic Rocco, who runs the state Department of Environmental Protection’s regional permit coordination office, acknowledged that department officials did not notify the PUC when they first recognized subsidences related to Sunoco Pipeline’s Mariner East pipeline expansion project in November and only belatedly communicated with the PUC when more sinkholes appeared this month.
See popular posts from the last 30 days in right column —
>>
w more home building along
transit routes to r
educe gas-guzzling commutes. Some
who support the goal have denounced the method