HARRISBURG, PA — Today, state Reps. Dianne Herrin, Danielle Friel Otten and Sen. Katie Muth hosted three residents who live along vastly different sections of the 350-mile-long Mariner East pipeline project (Chester, Indiana and Cambria counties) to tell their stories of loss of safe water for drinking, bathing, and laundry in their long-time residences.
The three residents, two of whom are disabled veterans and two of whom have worked in the fracking/pipeline industry, have refused to sign nondisclosure agreements with the pipeline operator and received no resolution from the operator or the commonwealth. To this day, they have been unable to live in their homes with a verified and sustained source of safe drinking water.
The event was live-streamed on Herrin’s legislative Facebook page.
The three elected officials are calling on the Wolf Administration and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to pull the Mariner East DEP project permits until the DEP permitting requirement to restore damaged private water supplies are met, calling it a failure of the administration’s duty to protect the constitutional right of residents to clean water and a failure of the DEP’s obligation to perform its oversight duties.
To date, DEP has received reports of water contamination due to the pipeline project from at least 150 well owners across the length of the pipeline. These stories come on the heels of the state attorney general’s criminal charges against Energy Transfer L.P., including 48 counts of environmental crimes for its conduct during construction of the Mariner East 2 pipeline.
For the latest news on everything happening in Chester County and the surrounding area, be sure to follow MyChesCo on Google News.