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Shell Chemicals’ new cracker plant in Beaver County has exceeded its air permit limits for two months in a row, prompting a notice of violation from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The petrochemical plant near Monaca was officially pronounced to be in commercial operations last month, but start up activities began months earlier. In September, the facility had by far its worst air quality month, releasing 492 tons of volatile organic compounds from its high-pressure flare, according to data submitted to the DEP by Shell. The emissions ate up 95% of the annual limit included in Shell’s air permit....

Brace yourself for inflation where you least expect itin Pennsylvania’s bathrooms. That was the conclusion state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe came to Monday while chairing a hearing of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, which heard testimony about the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) plan to revise requirements for its Biosolids Beneficial Use General Permit. This is a permit for anyone who deals in the land application of biosolids— livestock manure on farms, and the stuff you flush in the bathroom that ends up in a septic tank or a wastewater treatment facility. Biosolids can be used in mine...

Several groups that often are at odds over environmental rules are on the same side when it comes to easing methane regulations at oil and gas sites. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection joined major oil and gas companies, environmental groups and lawmakers from both parties last week in urging the Trump administration not to go through with its proposal to eliminate methane control requirements from well sites and pipelines across the country. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to roll back rules adopted in 2016 that require companies to identify and stop methane leaks from new and modified...

Michael Krancer, Gov. Corbett's chief environmental regulator, seems to delight in doing battle with critics of the state's oversight of the Marcellus Shale gas boom. In May, Krancer said that Delaware "smells like the tail of a dog" because of its opposition to drilling regulations proposed for the Delaware River Basin. In a congressional hearing, he challenged a Cornell University scientist to a duel over hydraulic fracturing (just kidding, Krancer said). Then there were Krancer's snarky skirmishes with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over regulation of drilling, which is traditionally a function of state agencies like Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental...

After the bumper 2011 legislative session, you might expect a modest wish list from Connecticut legislators, environmentalists and conservation advocates for 2012. Not happening. Nearly a year after those groups and the Malloy administration began an energy and environmental reform quest that resulted in the new Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, an unprecedented comprehensive energy bill designed to upend energy business as usual, scads of funding for clean water projects, commitments to open space and a host of other initiatives, all parties are back asking for more. And a lot more -- legislative and not -- have agendas that,...

The bag contained enough of the crystallized substance “to wipe out the neighborhood,“ O’Loughlin said A Northeastern University lab tech’s suspected suicide by cyanide - 30 miles away from campus - is raising public safety fears over easy access to deadly chemicals days after the ninth anniversary of 9/11. The 30-year-old NU lab tech - identified by the school as Emily Staupe - was found dead early yesterday morning in her Milford bedroom along with what initial tests show was a plastic bag filled with crystallized cyanide, according to Milford and state police. Neil Livingstone, a Washington, D.C., terrorism expert,...

New Jersey faces a potential shutdown of its $790 million oyster, clam and mussel harvest if federally-mandated health inspections and coastal patrols are not improved this summer, according to state and federal authorities. How the state responds over the next few months to federal requirements geared toward preventing outbreaks of illness from contaminated shellfish is crucial to the mollusk industry, said officials from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA contends the state Department of Health and Senior Services failed to conduct adequate inspections in 2008 and 2009 at plants that process the mollusks hauled in by small, commercial...

SIMSBURY, Conn. - A 300-pound male black bear caused a commotion when it ran near several businesses before being tranquilized and relocated by state officials. The bear darted between buildings and across parking lots along Route 44 and Simsbury Commons for three hours on Thursday afternoon, surprising shoppers who gathered behind police tape with cameras and cell phones to catch a glimpse. A team from the state Department of Environmental Protection tranquilized the animal and released it about 10 miles away in the Nepaug State Forest. Onlookers got a last peek at the bear when it popped in and out...

The Commissioner of the New Jersey D.E.P. has decided to run interference for his puppetmaster, Governor James E. McGreevey of New Jersey, in blocking a bear hunt, despite a vote of 6-1 by the New Jersey Fish and Game Council supporting such a hunt. The members of said council probably know far more about this subject than either the Governor or his mouthpiece both of whom apparently are willing to sacrifice the welfare and safety of the majority of New Jersey's citizens for the benefit of a handfull of animal rights wackos. If the bear population in that state can't...

WASHINGTON, July 21 - In what critics say is another sign of increasing stress on the military, the Army has been forced to bring more new recruits immediately into the ranks to meet recruiting goals for 2004, instead of allowing them to defer entry until the next accounting year, which starts in October. As a result, recruiters will enter the new year without the usual cushion of incoming soldiers, making it that much harder to make their quotas for 2005. Instead of knowing the names of nearly half the coming year's expected arrivals in October, as the Army did last...

Hartford-(AP) -- F.B.I. agents are reportedly asking questions about an anonymous tip received during the deadly 2001 anthrax scare. According to a document obtained by The Hartford Courant, the F.B.I. summoned a scientist from the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection to the bureau's office in Washington D.C. last week. The newspaper did not name the scientist, but said investigators wanted to know whether he wrote a letter accusing a fellow E.P.A. scientist of being a potential terrorist. The scientist told federal investigators on Wednesday that he had nothing to do with the letter, but the document suggests he might be...

REASON * May 2000 Earth Day, Then and Now The planet's future has never looked better. Here's why. By Ronald Bailey Thirty Years ago, 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Fifth Avenue in New York City was closed to automobiles as 100,000 people joined in concerts, lectures, and street theater. More than 2,000 colleges and universities across America paused their anti-war protests to rally instead against pollution and population growth. Even Congress recessed, acknowledging that the environment was now on a political par with motherhood. Since that first Earth Day, the celebrations...

WASHINGTON -- Feeling like the day is dragging? Blame global warming.Increased man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a global warming gas, is slowing the Earth's rotation, according to a new study by Belgian scientists published Tuesday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.It's not much of a slowdown -- about 1.7 microsecond or 1.7 millionth of one second a year, according to co-author Michel Crucifix, a climate researcher at Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. The slowdown occurs because extra carbon dioxide expands the mass of the Earth's atmosphere from the Earth's surface. The change slows the Earth's rotation for the ...

When a car driven by two People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) activists hit a deer in New Jersey last November, PeTA saw red. As a result of that accident, PeTA has faxed a notice to Bob McDowell, director of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Fish and Wildlife, and John Bradway, chairman of the New Jersey Fish and Game Council, making them aware of PeTA’s intent to sue them over of the accident. PeTA claims that the accident--as well as thousands more that take place every year--was “ … caused by the state’s mismanagement ...

A deal that was supposed to offer cleaner air through tougher auto emissions tests has become a "mammoth boondoggle" that will cost New Jersey taxpayers millions of dollars more than earlier estimates, a new state report says. The report, released Wednesday, claims the process that awarded the contract to test car emissions benefited politicians, lobbyists, bureaucrats and the corporation that was the sole bidder for the work. "The investigation revealed an ill-conceived state process undermined by mismanagement from within and tainted by manipulation from without," the State Commission of Investigation report said. The computerized vehicle emissions test system will have...

GREENWICH, Conn. (AP) _ A town police officer responsible for looking into complaints about hunters has been charged with hunting illegally, the Greenwich Time reported Wednesday. Lt. Richard Cochran, 45, of Greenwich was arrested Sunday, a day on which state law prohibits hunting, authorities of the state Department of Environmental Protection said. The charge dates to the days when blue laws prohibited certain activities on Sundays. DEP Capt. Eric Nelson said agency officers responded to an anonymous complaint about a person hunting illegally on a Sunday and found Cochran, an avid bowhunter, in an area near Pecksland Road. Cochran told...