The pipeline is meant to connect Pennsylvania’s gas riches to the world. Mariner East 2 was a “high priority” project for the DEP and Gov. It is a process of working with companies to get their applications into a shape good enough to say yes. Granting a permit is rarely a yes-or-no decision, they explained. Independently assess whether those estimates were valid. Require Sunoco to protect soil from sliding down hills as a result of construction activities.ĭirect the company not to build on hills.Īsk Sunoco to estimate the risk of spills in certain drilling jobs. Make sure that public waterways weren't damaged by the pipeline. When the DEP issued the necessary permits for Sunoco to begin construction in February 2017, the agency put out fact sheets for the public carefully explaining what it could and could not do: How regulators and Sunoco assessed that risk was a moving target throughout the permitting and construction process, which, because of delays, is not expected to be done until 2020. All development has risks that must be weighed against the benefits, they argued. Others - union members, landowners, small businesses - wrote imploringly of jobs and innovation and energy independence. The Mariner East 2 pipeline, spanning 303 miles, crossing 570 wetlands and more than 1,200 streams - the largest project that state environmental regulators have ever dealt with - has put the Department of Environmental Protection in the crosshairs of what, from the sidelines, can feel like a moral judgment.Īmong the 29,000 public comments that DEP reviewed were calls by citizens to reject the permits outright - because the pipeline would contribute to climate change because they thought it unfair that a private company can claim land by eminent domain because Energy Transfer Partners, which merged with Sunoco last year, is the same outfit that battled protesters at the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota and had a record of violations in Pennsylvania. Laura Legere February 2017, a feat of audacious engineering has been unfolding across southern Pennsylvania.
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