The City of Pittsburgh’s incorporation of climate-change projections into its stormwater-control regulations have been highlighted by the latest National Climate Assessment as an example of how a city can prepare itself for the bigger, more frequent rain storms produced by the changing climate.

The federal document cited the former steel capital for its work requiring developers of new properties covering about a quarter of an acre of land, or with impervious surfaces of about an eighth of an acre, to install various kinds of green infrastructure so that their projects don’t worsen runoff.

The city is an early adopter of stormwater rules based on the expectation of increased future rainfall, which threatens worsening floods unless new development enhances the ability of land to absorb and store water rather than just deflecting it as runoff.

The rules “require new developments to plan for projected increases in heavy rainfall under climate change rather than building to historical rainfall amounts,” according to the assessment, published on Nov. 14. It also noted that Pittsburgh committed in 2021 to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

While bigger cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia are making “extensive” climate preparations, Pittsburgh is an example of an “innovative” approach to climate planning taken by a geographically, economically and politically diverse sampling of mid-sized cities, the climate assessment said.

“Their efforts generally receive less visibility, but the need among similarly sized cities in the [Northeast] region — to learn about best practices and lessons learned in developing and implementing climate action plans to inform their own efforts — can be significant,” the assessment said.

Pittsburgh’s existing stormwater rule was updated in April 2022 to include rainfall projections calculated two years earlier by Carnegie Mellon University and the Rand Corporation. Although the forecasts for more-likely but less-damaging storms were similar to projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the CMU/Rand forecast predicted even greater increases in rainfall than NOAA. 

For example, a so-called 100-year storm — that which is expected to occur only 1% of the time — is expected to dump 6.4 inches of rain on Pittsburgh in a 24-hour period, or about a sixth of what the city typically gets in a whole year, according to the CMU/Rand forecasts. That’s about two inches more than projected by NOAA, according to Kyla Prendergast, a senior environmental planner with the city.

By contrast, a more-likely “one-year storm” would mean 2.1 inches of rain fell on the city in 24 hours, similar to the federal projections.

“The rainfall depths are a bit higher than the NOAA ones, and that helps us to ensure that we’re holding developments to a higher standard, and whatever we’re building now is actually going to be able to manage the rainfall that we know we are going to be seeing in the next 10, 20, 50 years,” Prendergast said.

Myron Arnowitt, Pennsylvania director for the nonprofit Clean Water Action, welcomed the city’s inclusion of climate projections into its stormwater rules as a change that is much more likely to protect the city from flooding than an earlier version of the rule.

“What Pittsburgh is doing is making sure their regulations will actually work so that they reflect the reality of the climate crisis we’re in,” Arnowitt said. “If you’re writing stormwater rules, and you’re using rainfall amounts based on what happened in 1900 to 1950 before climate change really took off, you’re going to be controlling much less water than if you base it on what we expect rainfall to be like in the next 10, 20, 50 years. It makes a lot of sense.”

NOAA’s National Weather Service is working on an update of a regional estimate of precipitation frequency. The new report, called NOAA Atlas 15, will use climate-change information to “derive precipitation frequency estimates” when it is published in 2026, said NWS spokesman Michael Musher. 

NOAA said the new estimates will provide “critical information to support the design of state and local infrastructure nationwide under a changing climate.”

Climate scientists predict an increasingly warm, wet future and widespread disruption of historic weather patterns worldwide as a result of trapped greenhouse gases. The latest National Climate Assessment, the fifth in a series of the Congressionally mandated reports, said the United States has cut carbon emissions from their peak in 2007, and has done more to adapt to the effects of climate change in the last five years, but it urged much stronger action to lessen severe effects including flooding, wildfires, heat waves and sea-level rise.

In Pittsburgh, the latest rule blames more runoff for a range of ills including erosion and sedimentation, exceeding the carrying capacity of streams and sewers, increasing public costs to control stormwater, and threatening public health with the backup of raw sewage in basements.

“A comprehensive program of stormwater management, including regulation of development and activities causing accelerated runoff, is fundamental to the public health, safety and welfare,” the rule says.

To ensure that new developments lessen or at least do not increase runoff, developers can incorporate a variety of techniques such as rain gardens, green roofs and “construction wetlands” — areas that restore a landscape’s capacity to absorb rainfall, she said.

Projects that disturb at least 10,000 square feet of land or create 5,000 square feet or more of impervious surface are now required to submit their plans to the city’s stormwater permitting process, and to show that the project would not increase the amount of runoff during a rainstorm.

So far, the city has approved about 50 projects that include the new rainfall forecasts although none are yet under construction, so there’s limited evidence so far on the effectiveness of the new standard, Prendergast said.

But she argued that incorporation of the new climate projections into the development plans, and the city’s approval of them, already show that the standard is working.

The new rules will inevitably increase costs for developers, Prendergast said, but that would be less than the cost of reacting to future flooding based on outdated precipitation forecasts. There has been some pushback from developers since the rules were introduced but the pace of development hasn’t slowed, she said. The city has produced a “design manual” for developers, explaining the rule and the reasons for it.

Pittsburgh, located at the confluence of three rivers, and with many populated hillsides, is especially vulnerable to flooding, and has suffered loss of life during the worst storms. In 2011, a downpour left waters that overtopped cars and left drivers standing on their roofs or wading through chest-deep waters, Prendergast said. Four people died in that storm.

“We do have a lot of water in the city,” Prendergast said. “Historically, Pittsburgh has tried to fight against the water; we have a lot of streams that have been paved over, and turned into pipes. It worked for what we’ve seen in the past but as we move forward, we see that it’s not the most resilient approach to managing water. We’re hoping that with this code and other policies, we are going to be able to work with the water rather than against it.”

This article originally appeared in Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for the ICN newsletter here.

The post Pittsburgh is a poster child for climate-conscious planning appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

When Zakary Littlefield bought a home on a small dead-end street overlooking Pittsburgh’s South Side, he didn’t suspect that he’d be forced to sell it just three and a half years later. 

He noticed the cracked pavement when he purchased the property. The road had cratered and the asphalt was, inch-by-inch, crumbling down the hillside. 

Unable to navigate the shrinking, craggy edge, standard city garbage trucks soon stopped picking up his trash, later replaced by smaller refuse vehicles. Drivers no longer delivered to his doorstep. In the back of his mind a thought persisted: “My road may be gone tomorrow.”

Littlefield’s home, recently renovated and nestled along Newton Street in the South Side Slopes, is one of 11 properties on that street that the City of Pittsburgh intends to buy and then retire in an effort to mitigate the risk of landslides. 

In Pittsburgh and throughout northern Appalachia, the combination of a soft, clay-laden geology and a precarious, tilted topography raise the likelihood of landslides. With more frequent and intense rainfall expected in a warming world, the probability of damage to property and people is likewise expected to swell.

The home buyouts, funded with $1.2 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA], are one way that local governments can counter potential catastrophes. In other parts of South Pittsburgh, nearly $10 million in additional FEMA funds, plus millions more from the city, will be spent this winter to reinforce slopes deemed worth saving.

Maintaining Mount Washington

The slopes of Mount Washington have for years attracted concern from city officials.

In February of 2018, setting off what would become one of the wettest years in recent record, a landslide destroyed a home on Greenleaf Street in Duquesne Heights, spilling debris onto Route 51 and closing the thoroughfare. To the east, Mount Washington’s William Street has been closed and crumbling since 2018 and now resembles a narrow walking trail rather than the two-lane roadway it once was. At the bottom of Reese Street, the hillside is slowly sliding down a steep incline above a walking trail in Emerald View Park and Norfolk Southern’s railroad tracks. 

“There’s a lot of transportation infrastructure that has been impacted or could potentially be impacted by some of these landslides,” said Eric Setzler, the chief engineer at Pittsburgh’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure. 

Some of the existing  landslides on Greenleaf, William and Reese streets have been temporarily stabilized and the supports have been holding, Setzler said. But by the end of the spring, these three failing slopes will be permanently buttressed by the FEMA investment. 

The point of the stabilization projects, Setzler said, is to secure the hillside to protect residents, their homes and transportation infrastructure that could be damaged should a catastrophic event occur, ideally, “ensuring stability for decades to come.”

The city, which is contributing $3 million to the $13 million total project cost, anticipates work will begin this winter after the construction contracts are settled. The work is expected to finish by April 2025, and Setzler said the most noticeable disruption will be the closure of Greenleaf Street for much of the duration.

More rain, more slides, more costs

“Ten years ago, this wasn’t really even an issue that was on the city’s radar,” said Jake Pawlak, deputy mayor of Pittsburgh. That’s not because city administrators weren’t attentive, he said, but “because we weren’t having nearly so many landslides, which have really emerged as a major infrastructure challenge and safety challenge in the past decade.”

Now the number of potentially unstable slopes far outweighs the city’s capacity to fix them.  

“It’s a real challenge,” Pawlak said. “It’s a risk to people. It’s a risk to our economy. It’s a risk for infrastructure.”

In 2018, when historic rains drenched Southwestern Pennsylvania, the city spent more than $12 million on cleanup from landslides. “We want to be more proactive,” said Setzler. 

He’s targeting imminent or ongoing slides in Elliott, Riverview Park, Morningside, Perry North and South and the Hill District. If heavy rains persist, more could follow. 

The city has begun to allocate more money to fixing and preventing landslides. The 2024 budget calls for $4.6 million for slope failure remediation and $8 million next year. After that, the budgeted numbers taper to $2.3 million and $2.5 million and $2.7 million from 2026 and 2028. The decrease in 2026 does not represent a de-emphasis on landslides, but rather a normal ebb and flow of project funding cycles, Pawlak said. He expects more funding to be allocated to the budget in the years to come.

Even as more money flows to landslide prevention, the investments that these projects require, Pawlak said, could not be met without state and federal partnerships. 

The Mount Washington-area projects and partnership with FEMA, which pays 75% of the bill, he said, is a “great first step in what we hope to be an ongoing relationship in addressing these issues.”

Building buyout

When Littlefield met with city officials about his home on Newton Street, they told him the risk was higher than they’d like for people to be living there, and the cost of repair too high to justify.

“The outcome of that meeting was effectively that it would be cheaper to buy the houses there from residents that were on the road than to fix the road,” he said. 

The city offered fair value, Littlefield said, about the same amount that he paid for it, and he took the offer. “It would be impossible for me to sell the house to anyone else, so I kind of felt like it was the only reasonable option,” he explained. 

The city applied for another grant from FEMA to acquire the houses, through a program designed to eliminate high-risk properties, but the agency hasn’t yet confirmed the funds. With options limited for protecting private property, the buyouts allow city government to mitigate private risk through acquisitions and demolitions. 

“It’s an opportunity for people whose homes are at risk or severely damaged to start fresh and also for the government to reduce the risk by eliminating that property,” said MaryAnn Tierney, the regional administrator for FEMA.

When the federal funding was announced in December, Tierney toured the city’s at-risk hillsides.

“As we think about climate change and we think about areas that are at risk for climate change, it’s not just coastal communities,” Tierney said. “It is communities like Pittsburgh, where you see the effects of concentrated rain on these very significant and steep slopes.” 

She applauded Pittsburgh for its efforts, but recognized the remaining challenges.

“The city is doing all of the right things,” Tierney said. “They’ve prioritized this. They’re seeking grant dollars. They’re putting their own money behind it. They’ve had a massive engineering effort to think about this. … They should be commended for recognizing and trying to take proactive steps to address it.”

Photographs by Quinn Glabicki.

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on Instagram and X @quinnglabicki.

This story was fact-checked by Sarah Liez.

The post Slip sliding away: Federal funds buy out Pittsburgh homes under threat from landslides appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

I have climate anxiety.

I think many folks in my generation – what I call the ‘Captain Planet Generation’ – do. I spent all of my school years being told to save the rainforest, save the everglades, save the oceans by recycling and cutting up the plastic rings from pop cans so they don’t strangle sea turtles.

Back then, we still had a chance to save those places by doing those things. But thirty years later, we’re in a worse predicament. Even Dr. Jane Goodall, my childhood idol who left her field work with chimpanzees 37 years ago to try to help the cause, can’t inspire much hope for me. It’s incredibly overwhelming. I still want to help the environment, but if my efforts are at the front of my mind every single day, I risk drowning in a sea of climate grief.

My solution? Make a positive difference by doing high-impact, low-mental-energy things. I call it ‘lazy environmentalism.’

Though the word ‘lazy’ typically has a pejorative meaning, I am reclaiming it in this context. Lazy environmentalism doesn’t mean I don’t care enough to do anything. Rather, it means that I care a great deal, but don’t have the mental bandwidth to make the kind of changes that require a lot of time and energy, such as going vegan or riding a bicycle for daily transportation.

For me, lazy environmentalism means I only have to think about a given effort once or twice a year.

Don’t blow, barely rake

The ultimate lazy environmentalist move? You’ve probably heard of it: ‘Leaving the leaves.’ It turns out that not doing yard chores is a great way to help the environment.

This is the time of year when I’m driven crazy by leaf blowers running at all times of the day. I embrace the silence and simplicity of not raking my leaves at all, except for maybe along walking pathways.

Perhaps, like me, you’d never given much thought to what happens to bugs in the winter. They just seem to suddenly disappear in the fall and magically reappear in the spring. Well, what really happens is they burrow under those fallen leaves where it’s nice and warm from the slow decomposition process that occurs between winter and spring.

Maeve Rafferty, Tree Pittsburgh’s education coordinator, says, “I love to watch robins come to my yard in the spring and flip over the leaves with their beaks to find insects. So you’re really providing benefits to all sorts of species by leaving the leaves.”

Housing for bugs

Another thing I don’t do is clean up my garden beds until early spring. I leave all the hollow stems up, again to provide shelter for overwintering insects, which are facing population collapse that could endanger the entire food chain. Rafferty says I could also cut the stems back to about six inches, since in the wild said stems would be naturally broken by animals wandering through the landscape, and the hollows are what the insects need more than the intact stems. “It’s just giving them a bit of help in a more managed landscape situation,” she says.

To supplement my stems, I also keep a small insect house on my front porch. I bought mine at a local dollar store, and it looks like an open birdhouse with straws inside. This mimics those natural hollow stems and offers a place for insects to burrow, lay eggs or hibernate.

“I love them,” Rachel Handel, communications director for Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, says of insect houses. “Though they actually require maintenance that a lot of people don’t do on them. If you don’t maintain them, it’s not doing all the good it could do.”

To maintain your insect house, check it at the end of summer and clean out unoccupied cells. You may want to move an occupied insect house into a garden shed or unheated garage for the winter to protect it from wind and snow. You’ll also want to replace the parts every few years to avoid attracting mold or parasites.

If the idea of cleaning an insect house doesn’t appeal, then you can still provide shelter for native insects by – yet again – not doing a yard chore, this time mulching. “You can leave bare patches of soil that aren’t covered in mulch, especially in the sunlight, as a place for bees to nest in the ground,” Rafferty says. “These are native bees that don’t sting or make hives. They make individual nests in the ground.”

Let it grow before you mow

Once spring arrives, there’s more good news on the yard chore front: Delay that first mowing as long as you can.

“There’s a new movement called No-Mow May,” Handel says. “People wait as long as they can to mow their lawn for the first time each spring.”

Delaying that mow, or simply mowing less often (“Low-Mow Spring”) allows dandelions and clover to bloom in your yard. “It gives you an opportunity to support wildlife while the rest of the world is catching up,” Handel says. “The trees aren’t in bloom in early spring; there aren’t a lot of flowers yet. You’re creating a little environment right within your lawn so that if you don’t cut it, you’re providing food for pollinators ahead of other plants.”

Of course, your neighbors or local code enforcement officials might not be as enthused about No-Mow May. To help with that, the Audubon Society sells signs in its gift shops that say, “My yard isn’t mowed on purpose: I’m helping pollinators!”

To avoid the need for mowing outright, Phoebe Shackeroff, a leader of Climate Reality Pittsburgh and Southwest Pennsylvania, suggests planting more densely. “Some people call it meadowscaping,” she says. “Groundcover-style plants can fill in the spaces between larger plants and shrubs, keeping grass from growing.”

Plant local

Once the warmer weather starts and you begin thinking about plants for your garden, all of the folks I spoke to for this article said the same thing: Go native. “It doesn’t get a lot easier than native plants,” Handel says. “They’re uniquely designed to thrive here, and they’re perennials.”

I planted native common milkweed in my yard years ago, and have had the pleasure of hosting many monarch butterflies and other pollinators within it. It’s one of the few plants that doesn’t get zapped by the full afternoon sun in front of my house, so I’m even happier to have it.

Helpfully, the Audubon Society holds a native plant sale at Beechwood Farms Nature Reserve starting in May each year featuring flowers, shrubs and trees for a variety of environments. Whether your yard is sunny or shady, wet or dry, you can find low-maintenance plants there that will help create an oasis for native wildlife.

You can even get native trees for free. “If you don’t have trees but you’d like one, Tree Pittsburgh has a tree adoption event every spring and fall and people can register for up to three trees,” Rafferty says.

Both Rafferty and Shackeroff pointed out that native plants absorb far more stormwater than grass does, keeping it out of your basement. Even planting native plants in pots along a patio can help with this, Shackeroff says.

Constrain the cat

This one might not even sound like environmentalism: I keep my cats indoors.

Outdoor cats can be incredibly destructive to native wildlife. The International Union for Conservation of Nature includes domestic cats on its World’s Worst Invasive Species list, and a 2016 study by Australian researchers cited cats as having contributed to the extinction of 63 species of mammals, birds and reptiles, and placing further species at significant risk.

Seeing as bird populations have plummeted by 29% since 1970, according to a 2019 study led by Cornell University – that’s nearly 3 billion missing birds – they need all the help they can get. Your cat will thank you, too: even well-cared-for cats face significant health risks by going outside, from parasites and disease to physical dangers.

Buy thoughtfully

At the consumer level, Shackeroff suggests buying more products packaged in cardboard than in plastic, such as powdered laundry detergent, deodorant and lip balm. Bar soap can also cut down on single-use plastics, though you’ll want to find a variety that uses sustainable palm oil.

Another of my tricks is to bulk-buy coffee from Grounds for Change, a family-owned, certified organic processing company that is also carbon-free certified. I buy their Rainforest Trust blend, through which they make a donation to that organization. We also prepare it using an electric percolator, which is far more energy-efficient than the gas stove for heating water.

Low-effort energy changes

The best lazy environmentalism is the kind that is completely out of sight, out of mind. Several years ago, my family took advantage of Phipps Conservatory’s ongoing Green Power Drive to switch to a green energy provider. You can visit daily from noon to 5 p.m. and find representatives – typically in the Tropical Forest Room – to help you make the switch. The best part is that if you change providers on the spot, you get a free 12-month Phipps membership, or a free 6-month renewal if you’re already a member.

Since I set up the new plan, I simply call once per year to lock in a steady rate, though if you don’t mind a variable rate, you can be even lazier and forgo the call altogether.

Because you’re still drawing power from the local grid, you may not be using the actual green energy generated by the company you’ve chosen. But Dr. Joseph Conklin, senior extension educator for the Penn State Cooperative Extension, explains that “when you switch to a green energy provider, you’re essentially offsetting the impact of your energy use.”

The biggest thing you can do to help the environment around your house?

“Awareness,” Conklin says. “Look at your electric bill. It should give you a number there to compare your energy use to your neighbors’. It’ll tell you if you’re energy efficient or not.”

Conklin recommends checking with your energy company to see if you can get a free energy audit of your home. If you can’t get a free audit, you can get a reduced price – 30% of the normal cost – through the Inflation Reduction Act.

Turn down the heat bill

One easy thing to do is to use an attic bag. “This is an insulated bag that costs about $35 on Amazon that you put around the attic hole to your crawlspace,” Conklin says. It can reduce a major source of energy leaks in your home and cut down on heating costs.

Conklin also recommends installing a smart thermostat. “That’s huge,” he says. “The average homeowner, with the help of a YouTube video, can install one in an hour or two.” Once installed and programmed correctly, you can see how environmentally friendly your heating and cooling habits are. “If you like your house to be 72 degrees, how about trying 71?” Making this small change can have big environmental benefits.

Appliance science

In terms of household appliances, Shackeroff recommends replacing gas appliances with electric ones as they reach the end of their usefulness. Both she and Conklin recommend installing a heat pump in place of a HVAC unit. “A heat pump is three times more efficient than an air conditioner,” Conklin says. He also suggests heat pump dryers and water heaters.

There’s a lot of government funding available for homeowners to make energy-efficient improvements to their homes. The Penn State Cooperative Extension is keeping up with all the latest information for these programs and hosts regular webinars to educate homeowners.

I was happy to pick up some new tips from the professionals I interviewed for this article; I’m hoping to add some of them to my ‘lazy’ repertoire. If this list seems like too much for you, start small and add in steps as you can. It’s better to do one small thing than to do nothing.

Your climate anxiety will thank me.

Melanie Linn Gutowski is a freelance writer and museum educator and can be reached at melanielinngutowski@gmail.com.

The post The lazy Pittsburgher’s guide to going (a little) green appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Two hydrogen hubs partially located in Pennsylvania will receive slices of $7 billion in federal funding, the Biden Administration announced Friday. 

The proposed Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub [ARCH2] is based primarily in West Virginia but will span parts of Western Pennsylvania. In Eastern Pennsylvania, the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub, or MACH2, will also receive funding. The two projects are among seven nationally to be designated for funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. 

A separate proposal centered on the Pittsburgh region, which had garnered support from local and state officials including Gov. Josh Shapiro, Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and local labor and industry leaders, was not selected for funding by the White House, stirring disappointment among proponents.

The ARCH2 hydrogen hub, backed by the largest natural gas producer in the United States, Pittsburgh-based EQT Corp., will use fracked natural gas to produce hydrogen. The resulting carbon emissions from that process are to be captured and injected deep underground. The hub will center in West Virginia, but will also span parts of eastern Kentucky, Ohio and Southwestern Pennsylvania. The project is set to receive up to $925 million in federal funding.

Across the state, the MACH2 hydrogen hub will extend over parts of Pennsylvania, Delaware and southern New Jersey, and will use renewable and nuclear electricity to produce the element. The project is set to receive up to $750 million from the federal government.

The Biden Administration expects the seven hubs to catalyze an additional $43 billion in private investment, bringing the total to nearly $50 billion for “one of the largest investments in clean manufacturing ever.”

What is a hydrogen hub?

Hydrogen, nature’s simplest element, can be transported, stored and ultimately combusted with zero carbon footprint. But it takes energy to separate the hydrogen from other molecules.

Currently, 96% of global hydrogen production is powered by fossil fuels and is known as gray hydrogen. Hydrogen separated from water using electricity from renewable sources is known as green hydrogen. Blue hydrogen would be made with natural gas, and the resulting carbon emissions would be captured and buried deep underground through a process known as carbon capture and sequestration. 

Hydrogen is a key component of the Biden administration’s goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, but it is restricted to uses that are difficult to electrify, such as steel and cement production, heavy-duty transportation and shipping.

Pittsburgh left out?

Locally, business and labor organizations expressed disappointment with the decision to fund the West Virginia-based ARCH2 proposal over another hub that would have been based in the Pittsburgh Region, the Decarbonization Network of Appalachia [DNA], which was also among 33 finalists. 

“While we are disappointed that the [Southwestern Pennsylvania]-based DNA project was not chosen, we’re pleased that the eastern side of the state has the potential to benefit from the jobs and investment associated with the MACH2 project,” said Jeff Nobers, executive director of Pittsburgh Works Together, a labor and industry organization, in a statement Friday morning. 

“We will have a role in the WV-based ARCH2 project, and some jobs will be created here and in other areas of the state, but certainly not at the level we had hoped. It is critical that we work together to attract as many jobs and as much investment as possible from the ARCH2 project” into Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Joe Rockey, the Republican nominee for Allegheny County executive, called the Department of Energy decision “an example of what happens when local leaders don’t unite behind important projects.” In a statement, he accused Democratic nominee Sara Innamorato of opposing the energy industry.

Innamorato later issued a statement that ARCH2 “has the potential to benefit thousands of skilled union workers in Western Pennsylvania.” She said more federal funding is likely. “We will win our fair share.”

According to the Department of Energy, ARCH2 is projected to create more than 3,000 permanent jobs in addition to 18,000 construction jobs, some of which are likely to be spread across parts of Western Pennsylvania. 

(Left) A screenshot from a Shale Insight presentation shows a projected distribution of jobs from the ARCH2 project. (Right) A screenshot from Shale Insight shows a projected distribution of hydrogen production from the ARCH2 project.

Demand for hydrogen?

At a town hall meeting in Moundsville, West Virginia, last month, EQT CEO Toby Rice acknowledged a fundamental issue with the hydrogen economy: “The biggest problem with hydrogen right now, there’s nobody that uses hydrogen,” he said. He added that hydrogen is a “classic chicken and the egg situation,” in that you need supply to fuel demand, and vice versa.

Another issue, he said, is cost.

“To use hydrogen pure is going to require completely new infrastructure,” he said. “Completely new pipelines, transportation networks. Guess what? That’s going to make it very costly.”

The carbon dioxide pipelines needed for carbon capture and sequestration in a Southwestern Pennsylvania hydrogen hub could cost $10 billion, according to a 2021 study by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Underground storage and other infrastructure would add to that price tag.  

“Right now, there isn’t sufficient demand for either hydrogen or carbon capture to justify the construction of a bunch of pipelines for either carbon or hydrogen,” said Sean O’Leary, a senior researcher for energy and petrochemicals at the Ohio River Valley Institute. 

O’Leary said the buildout of facilities that manufacture and consume hydrogen, along with carbon capture infrastructure, is “something that’s going to play out over time.”

The federal funding awarded, O’Leary said, “isn’t enough to even begin constructing the pipelines and other infrastructure that are necessary for this. It barely scratches the surface.”

Concern for health and environment

A consortium of 32 environmental and health advocacy organizations, meanwhile, expressed deep concerns with the decision to fund the Appalachian hub.

“Whether it’s the continued operation of fossil fuel power plants, the increased risk from new pipelines and underground storage of carbon, or locking in more toxic air and water pollution from shale gas development, the public will have to bear the significant health burden of this hydrogen hub” said Alison L. Steele, executive director of the Environmental Health Project, in a co-signed statement Friday morning. Steele pointed to recent studies by Pitt and the Pennsylvania Department of Health which found increased rates of cancer, asthma attacks and low birth weight among people living in close proximity to fracking. 

“The commitment to continuing these harms just weeks after the findings of the Pennsylvania health study highlights just how deeply our leaders are failing Appalachian communities.”

The statement also pointed to research that questions blue hydrogen’s role as a climate solution.

“Hydrogen produced from natural gas perpetuates our reliance on fossil fuels and locks in our dependency on an unsustainable energy system,” said Shannon Smith, executive director of FracTracker Alliance in the joint statement. “Misrepresenting fossil-fuel derived hydrogen with carbon capture and storage technology as an effective transitional energy source fails to account for a wide array of adverse environmental and social impacts.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with additional comment on the Department of Energy’s decision.

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on Instagram @quinnglabicki.

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In Marianna, the headaches began just as soon as the drilling did. 

Seated in her living room in the Washington County borough of around 500 on an afternoon in August, Kimberly Laskowsky flipped through pages of notes she’s kept through years of deteriorating health. She started chronicling after EQT’s Gahagan well pad was built 850 feet away in West Bethlehem Township.

Laskowsky recorded 374 migraines in one month after the drilling began in 2019. “Like someone stabbing my head with a knife,” she wrote. 

Laskowsky recalled her granddaughter, Samantha, crouched in pain in front of the post office, gripping her head in her hands. “Make it stop! Make it stop!” she had cried. Laskowsky’s neighbor, Tammy Boardley, experienced similar migraines, as did Wesley Silva’s wife, daughter and granddaughter two streets over. 

Read more: FLIR camera in hand, watchdog traverses Washington County, revealing invisible emissions

She had always had low blood pressure, but since the frack it’s been chronically high, “up near 200,” she said. In August 2021, Laskowsky collapsed on her bathroom floor.

That year, the trees across the street lost their leaves in August, Laskowsky remembered.

EQT’s Gahagan well pad (left) rests approximately 800 feet from Maple Street in Marianna (right), where Kimberly Laskowsky and Tammy Boardley live.

In Pennsylvania, state law allows drilling up to 500 feet from a home. Across the commonwealth, nearly 1.5 million people live within a half mile of active oil and gas wells, compressors or processing stations. In Washington County, the most heavily fracked in the state, more than half of residents live within that radius. 

Read more: Study on health benefits of Neville Island coke plant closure raises questions about Clairton

Drilling near homes occurs against the backdrop of mounting scientific evidence which correlates fracking and health problems. Last month, joint studies by the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the University of Pittsburgh found a 5-to-7-fold greater risk of developing lymphoma among children within one mile of a well. A separate study found that people with asthma are four to five times more likely to have an asthma attack if they live near wells even after fracking is complete, during production. Toxic hydrocarbons commonly linked to fracking like benzene are listed by the Environmental Protection Agency to cause dizziness, headaches, anemia and neurological disorders.

Last year, researchers from Yale School of Public Health found that children within 2 kilometers of at least one fracking well were two to three times more likely to develop leukemia and suggested that existing setback distances “are insufficiently protective of children’s health.” 

In 2020, the 43rd Statewide Grand Jury found that the current state setback rule barring drilling within 500 feet of homes is “dangerously close” and inadequate for the protection of public health, recommending a 2,500 foot buffer. “An increase in the setback, to 2,500 feet, is far from extreme, but would do a lot to protect residents from risk.”

Read more: Joint Pitt, state studies find link between proximity to fracking and increased cancer rates, asthma attacks, low birth weight

The report concluded: “The closer you live to a gas well, compressor station or pipeline the more likely you are to suffer ill effects.” Josh Shapiro, then the attorney general, pledged to implement the report’s recommendations during his successful campaign for governor last year.

Despite this, legislative efforts to keep drilling at bay have stalled in Harrisburg. And in the absence of a more restrictive state setback law, small municipalities like Marianna and their residents have been left to fend for themselves.

No reforms from Harrisburg

In February, shortly after Shapiro was inaugurated, the state Department of Environmental Protection [DEP] formed a working group to review the findings of the 2020 grand jury report and determine what, if anything, the state should do. 

According to DEP Press Secretary Josslyn Howard, the group is composed of agency legal experts, program deputies and executive staff, and is led by DEP’s chief counsel, Carolina DiGiorgio.

On June 26, Richard Negrin, then-acting DEP secretary, told a Senate committee that he expected the group’s findings by the end of the summer.

Read more: Inside Pennsylvania’s monitoring of the Shell petrochemical complex

State Sen. Gene Yaw, R-Williamsport, raised what he called a “serious concern” with legislation that was scheduled for a vote the following day. House Bill 170, if passed, would follow the recommendations of the 43rd Grand Jury and expand Pennsylvania’s no-drill zones to restrict fracking within 2,500 feet of homes and 5,000 feet of schools or hospitals. Yaw said he had received a memo from the DEP’s legislative affairs director indicating the administration’s support for the bill. 

“For all practical purposes, that would shut down about 99% of the drilling in the most productive areas in Pennsylvania,” Yaw said. “If it’s your intent to ban drilling, then let’s say, ‘We’re going to ban drilling.’”

In a statement this month to PublicSource, Marcellus Shale Coalition President David Callahan called HB 170 and similar setback proposals a “backdoor ban” on natural gas development, adding: “These proposals are not grounded in fact or science and ignore Pennsylvania’s strong regulatory framework, the continued technological advancements that allow us to continue to produce natural gas safely and responsibly, and the economic and environmental benefits shared by all Pennsylvanians.”

Kimberly Laskowsky flips through pages of notes chronicling her deteriorating health since EQT’s Gahagan well pad was built 850 feet from her home in Marianna.

The day after Negrin’s committee appearance, state Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware County, received an unexpected phone call. Vitali, the majority chair of the state’s House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee was set to preside over a vote on HB 170. Three years after the grand jury report, Vitali was confident the legislation would pass committee; he had secured enough votes to send the bill to the House floor. And with his party now holding a slim majority, it stood a chance.

Read more: Working the brownfields: Postindustrial sites turn into opportunities for local employment and environmental restoration

But at the eleventh hour, Vitali reversed course. “Here’s the situation,” he told the committee. “Five minutes ago I was called by [House Democratic] leadership and asked not to run these bills,” including the setback proposal and an unrelated moratorium on new air quality permits for cryptocurrency data mining facilities.

“I am deeply disappointed by this decision but I am going to comply with the wishes of my leadership,” he continued, before abruptly adjourning the meeting. 

For Vitali, the bill had been an opportunity to make a statement that the health of citizens is more important than the oil and gas industry. “Regrettably, we failed,” he later lamented. “We made just the opposite statement. Special interests prevailed yet again in this building.” By killing the legislation in committee, Vitali suggested that the Democratic leadership was protecting its caucus from a potentially uncomfortable public vote, and signaling that the priority is maintaining broad electoral support. Had he held the vote anyway, Vitali said he was told he could face “consequences”.

Neither House Speaker Joanna McClinton nor Majority Leader Matt Bradford responded to PublicSource’s requests for comment. 

Read more: Allegheny County’s handling of asphalt company’s pollution request leaves some feeling paved over

“Our caucus has failed to prioritize environmental policy,” Vitali said.

DEP spokesperson Howard said the agency will collaborate with the Department of Health and the Office of the Attorney General and will move to conduct “independent scientific research and analysis.” 

Howard said the agency will have more information on its deliberations on setback legislation and other reforms in the coming weeks.

‘No opportunity to say no’ in Marianna

Marianna, the former coal mining community in southern Washington County, once attempted to prevent industry from encroaching on its doorstep. Several years ago, Marianna and the much larger West Bethlehem Township began to work on a “joint venture” that would limit how close drilling could come to local homes, according to Thomas Donahoo, a supervisor in West Bethlehem.

Silva, then-council president in Marianna, said he had traveled to other small towns to see the industry’s impact. “It was appalling. For smaller communities, they really had no regard for anything.”

As the neighboring municipalities considered new zoning that could restrict drilling, officials said, EQT donated money to local causes, including to the local library, a local Christmas parade and $1,000 for a baseball field backstop. 

“If we reached out and asked for help, they helped us,” said Jeremy Berardinelli, Marianna’s current council president. 

Read more: From implosion’s dust, competing visions for Allegheny Valley’s future emerging

By Silva’s account, the company presented to the borough and the township and promised jobs, asking locals: “‘How would you feel if we could bring this town back to life?’ It painted a picture as though big things were going to happen.”

EQT did not respond to questions from PublicSource.

Both municipalities drafted zoning ordinances and discussed a 1,000 foot local setback, according to Silva and Donahoo.

When Marianna’s council held a meeting including a vote on the zoning proposal, it drew several EQT representatives. Meeting minutes from that day show that state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-Washington, was also there in the cramped cinder block building. In a 3-2 vote, Marianna’s council passed a zoning code, but it defers to the state’s 500-foot setback minimum.

West Bethlehem’s supervisors, after drafting a zoning regulation, never voted on it, according to Donahoo, and the township has no regulations to limit drilling near homes.

EQT developed the Gahagan Pad in West Bethlehem Township, just beyond 800 feet from where Laskowsky and Boardley live in Marianna. 

“There was nothing we could do on the borough side to stop it,” said Berardinelli. He opposed the Marianna ordinance in 2017, but has concerns with well pad proximity to homes. “Public safety is paramount,” he said. “It just shouldn’t be that close to a residential area.” 

Read more: As feds move toward decision on hydrogen hubs, players jockey for PA policy

As Silva sees it, a more restrictive statewide setback law would give smaller communities legal recourse to keep industry at bay. “It would level the playing field for a lot of communities,” he said. “Had the regulations been in place, this wouldn’t have happened to small communities like Marianna.” 

Laskowsky recalled an interminable tapping and a high-pitched whine as EQT drilled. On several nights she resolved to leave, sleeping in her minivan down the street to escape the noise and the lights and the fumes.

Boardley, who also endured migraines, recalled vibrations that shook her home with such vigor that ornaments fell from the shelves. 

“I have enough chemicals in me to be living right down on that pad,” said Laskowsky.

Urine samples collected in August 2019 showed Laskowsky and her granddaughter both had elevated levels of metabolites of the volatile organic compounds toluene, ethylbenzene and benzene, a potent carcinogen. 

Read more: Advocates tell Allegheny County Board of Health: More work needed on housing code overhaul

Now that efforts at both the state and local level have failed to rein in fracking, Marianna residents fear things are only poised to worsen.

There’s a new well pad under construction along the borough’s border, and another up the road. 

“You get cancer from this stuff. That’s what I hear,” said Boardley. 

“It sucks to be us sitting here.”

Photographs by Quinn Glabicki.

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on instagram and X @quinnglabicki. 

This story was fact-checked by Punya Bhasin.

The post ‘It’s just too close’: People living near fracking suffer as Pa. and local governments fail to buffer homes appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Beyond the Gahagan Pad and across Ten Mile Creek, in the woods of Marianna, Christina DiGiulio extended a camera from the passenger seat of a white SUV, aiming its lens toward a mass of pipes and valves at an Equitrans Midstream compressor station. The field scientist flipped out the screen, revealing a spectrum of oranges and blues and reds — it was a FLIR camera, a $90,000 piece of technical equipment used to detect otherwise invisible emissions. On the screen, the facility lit up. 

A steady plume of royal blue emissions drifted up from the compressors against a red thermal background on the camera’s display. They stretched skyward and drifted away in the breeze. 

A FLIR camera shows emissions in blue rising from a drilling rig in Washington County on August 29, 2023.

FLIR — for Forward-Looking Infrared — cameras are often used by operators or regulators to detect leaks, but DiGiulio, who works with the health advocacy organization Physicians for Social Responsibility, uses the camera to document invisible emissions in communities encroached by industry. 

Read more: ‘It’s just too close’: People living near fracking suffer as Pa. and local governments fail to buffer homes

The proximity of gas drilling to homes and schools is regulated by the state, and legislative efforts this year to increase buffers have stalled. Many industrial emissions are invisible, and their effects aren’t fully known. A FLIR camera, though, can make the stakes much more tangible.

“When I see something, I know it’s a hydrocarbon,” DiGiulio said. She operated similar chemical detection equipment for the U.S. Department of Defense as an analytical chemist before turning her attention to the shale fields. That day, she and Jodi Borello, an organizer in Washington County with the Center for Coalfield Justice [CCJ], had traversed the hills of Washington County, stopping frequently to image frack pads, compressor stations and other gas infrastructure next to schools, parks and residential neighborhoods.

Christina DiGiulio hikes through the woods and images a well pad with a FLIR camera near Washington, Pennsylvania, on August 29, 2023.

The FLIR image can pick up hydrocarbon emissions at a single source or facility, but it can’t tell methane from benzene, and it can’t detect how much is being emitted. Regardless, the images raise questions about the cumulative effect of invisible industrial pollution on communities like Marianna, in Washington County’s shale country. 

“It’s right next to people’s houses,” DiGiulio said. “Over a long period of time that’s direct contact. It’s cumulative.”

Read more: Study on health benefits of Neville Island coke plant closure raises questions about Clairton

FLIR imaging is in part a way to validate the experiences of those communities. By visualizing the emissions, DiGiulio is hoping to help people to better trust their bodies, and to show that their symptoms could have a culprit. “It’s like trying to train people to not be so desensitized to it anymore.”

Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Center for Coalfield Justice join eight other organizations in advocating for increased setback distances in Pennsylvania. A coalition of organizations advocates for a minimum buffer of 3,281 feet between fracking pads and residences, and greater distances for ethane cracker plants, compressors and natural gas processing plants, based on a number of studies examining health impacts. 

Read more: Inside Pennsylvania’s monitoring of the Shell petrochemical complex

A state law would go a long way in disrupting the exposure that many Pennsylvanians experience but might not see when fracking comes to their backyard, DiGiulio said. But even a new regulation wouldn’t protect communities from the accumulation of pollutants in the most densely drilled parts of the state.

Representatives of the natural gas industry, and some legislators, have said that setbacks would amount to a de facto ban on new drilling.

Photographs by Quinn Glabicki.

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on instagram and X @quinnglabicki. 

This story was fact-checked by Punya Bhasin.

The post FLIR camera in hand, watchdog traverses Washington County, revealing invisible emissions appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

The sun was bright in Duquesne, and Luke Zidek was already sweating. He pulled on a pair of orange fluorescent boots and fixed a respirator over his mouth and nose, sealing himself from the outside world inside of a bright blue hazmat suit.

He flashed an OK sign to his partner, and the two men stepped in unison toward a black barrel lying on its side in a puddle of toxic chemicals. With a wrench, they worked in tandem to plug the leaky spout and enclosed the entire barrel safely in a plastic tank. A stopwatch clicked — just on time. 

Atop the site of a former steel mill, this was merely a training exercise. The liquid spilled was nothing more than water. Zidek is one of more than 250 people who have trained through local programs since 2016 to clean up toxic waste and remediate postindustrial sites known as brownfields. Among the hills of Southwestern Pennsylvania and along the riverbanks that have hosted industry for generations, now-vacant brownfields are ripe for cleanup, transformation and reuse. 

Pennsylvania is home to 90 Superfund sites on the EPA’s National Priorities List, the most of any state besides New Jersey and California. More than 1,300 brownfields are scattered throughout the state; 276 are concentrated in Allegheny County. And despite Appalachia’s receding industrial identity, new brownfields continue to be created year after year. Decades of remediation could be needed to cleanse East Palestine, Ohio, where in February a freight train carrying highly toxic vinyl chloride derailed and exploded. And decades more will be required to reclaim the scattered relics of our coal history.

Read more: They’re calling it ‘bio valley,’ but Hazelwood residents want to know what it means for them

In 2021, Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which allocated an unprecedented $1.5 billion to brownfield-related programs nationwide. It was a significant boon to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s brownfield grant funding. Two local recipients — social services agency Auberle and Landforce, which focuses on land stewardship and workforce development — each received $500,000 in 2022 to train a new generation of professionals who will work to cleanse the region’s industrial messes.

A new career 

The 44-year-old Zidek stepped out of the decontamination pools set up at the parking lot in Duquesne. It was his first time in the suit, and the heat and claustrophobia were beginning to affect him. “I nearly had a panic attack,” he said, panting on the July afternoon.

Zidek spent three years in the Marine Corps handling dogs that sniff for narcotics as a military police officer, and later spent time in Baghdad and Kurdistan detecting explosives as a private contractor. He was medically discharged in 2002 after he fell through a window and lacerated his ulnar nerve, artery and six tendons. “It almost killed me,” he said. Now a disabled veteran, Zidek is turning to a new career cleaning the dirt of industries past. 

Read more: Allegheny County’s handling of asphalt company’s pollution request leaves some feeling paved over

Against the backdrop of climate change and a national shift from carbon-intensive energy and industry, the demand for brownfield work is poised to skyrocket. More than 4,000 regional job openings are expected in the remediation field by 2027 between just five local employers surveyed by Auberle, explained Abby Wolensky, the director of the organization’s Employment Institute. Part of that demand is driven by Allegheny County’s uniquely high density of brownfield sites.

The infrastructure funding more than doubled the amount organizations such as Auberle and Landforce could receive from the EPA grants, up from $200,000 to $500,000. Both organizations have received EPA grants in the past, and the increase in funding enabled Landforce to pay participants an hourly stipend, and Auberle to double the number of program participants.

Auberle recruits from all over Allegheny and Westmoreland counties; a majority of participants come from the Mon Valley, “which tends to face some of the worst environmental disparities,” said Wolensky. Between Hazelwood and Homestead, Duquesne and Clairton, much of the riverfront has an industrial history.

Read more: Replacement housing for Bedford Dwellings gets city’s OK

By putting local people to work in places that have been impacted by industry, “they’re helping to revitalize their own communities,” said Wolensky.

Auberle’s brownfield training program has graduated 117 people since 2016, and 113 of them now have career-track employment in brownfield remediation work, earning an average hourly wage of $18.68. Zidek graduated from Auberle’s program in July along with 12 other people, 10 of whom have already been hired with local brownfield remediation companies. 

At his new job at PRISM Spectrum, an environmental services company in Export, Zidek earns $27 an hour and joined the local union; he’ll focus on asbestos and lead remediation. His specialty will be needed in cases like that of the Cheswick Generating Station, which prior to being demolished earlier this year required nearly a year of asbestos abatement and remediation before the structure could be safely imploded.

Read more: From implosion’s dust, competing visions for Allegheny Valley’s future emerging

Zidek recalled the old pumphouse down by the Monongahela River in Brownsville, where he graduated from high school: “Asbestos all through it,” he remembered. “I think it’s great that they have these grants to clean up these areas and turn them into something useful.” He hopes to train to be a supervisor next, and he told two people at the Veteran’s Administration about the program who plan to enroll in October. 

“I learned the ability to identify markers that are on the chemicals that are being transported through our communities, like on the trains. I could tell if it’s a corrosive or a gas, or an explosive,” said Zidek. “I used to be a chef and a military police and security. I got a whole new career field now.”

Taking to the trails

A few miles up the river, deep in the forests beneath the hilltop neighborhood of Beechview, a crew of about 20 people wearing highlighter shirts and helmets carried shovels and picks into the woods. The Landforce crew was building a network of trails and restoring balance to the long-neglected woodland. 

One morning in mid-July, Thomas Guentner, Landforce’s director of land stewardship, waded through thickets of invasive knotweed, stepping over construction materials protruding through the earth, dumped there long ago.

The work is expanding how we think about brownfields, Guentner explained: “No part of the city was left unscathed by its industrial past.” 

At Seldom Seen Greenway, the soil quality has eroded from years of illegal dumping, and a lack of forest management has allowed invasive vegetation to grip the hillsides, threatening ecological health. By summer’s end, Landforce tamed dense thickets of vines and pulled bricks from the dirt. The crew built 1.2 miles of new trails, connecting residential Beechview to Brashear High School, and in turn to the greenway’s entrance on Route 19. This fall, Landforce will plant more than 100 native trees and, eventually, the greenway will become one of Pittsburgh’s newest parks.

Building trails aids mobility, said Guentner, who pointed to new opportunities for recreation and creating urban connections to nature. Clearing invasive species makes space for native vegetation to grow, boosting the entire ecosystem. And as Pittsburgh copes with climate change and grapples with intense rainfall, flooding and landslides, the need for well-managed and resilient urban woodlands is only growing.

“Every program can be a little bit different. And that’s really the beauty of these grants,” explained Gianna Rosati, senior brownfields project officer with the EPA. To receive the funds, she said, “you need to show the backlog of issues in your community, and obviously the Pittsburgh area has that clear need and issue. So yeah, what they’re doing definitely impacts brownfields, even though they’re not doing the soil assessment or remediation.”

Landforce has completed similar work in Hazelwood, which meets a more traditional definition of a brownfield owing to its history of steel production.

Transforming land, transforming people

Zidek’s time in the military led him to grapple with PTSD and substance abuse. “I struggle with things,” he said. But the programs at Auberle and Landforce are designed to help people overcome barriers to employment such as prior incarceration, addiction history, homelessness or a lack of proven work experience.

Participants in the programs at Landforce and Auberle come from all walks of life.

Read more: Inside Pennsylvania’s monitoring of the Shell petrochemical complex

Pausing between rounds of grueling work on the trails in July, Marvin Carmon, of Homewood, explained that he joined the Landforce crew to learn new skills, which he hopes to bring back to his own community. “We have a whole lot of land back in Homewood that’s not being taken care of,” he said. He dreams of building a network of trails there, too, so kids like his twin boys can enjoy the outdoors in their own backyard.

After completing the horticulture program at Bidwell Training Center in Manchester, Andre Reihl joined the Landforce crew. “I’m hoping it gets me back into the green space,” he said, sharing his dream of building pollinator and rain gardens in his home community of Hazelwood. “I want to make a career out of it.”

By late afternoon, the crew had made its way along most of the trail, smoothing and shaping its contours with picks and shovels and rakes. 

“Look around,” called out Shawn Taylor, a former crew member who’s now a supervisor. He turned his head to look back to where they began, along more than a mile of new trails that the crew had cleared through thickets of trees and invasive vines. “You all built Seldom Park.” 

Photographs by Quinn Glabicki.

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on Instagram @quinnglabicki. 

Jack Troy fact-checked this story.

The post Working the brownfields: Postindustrial sites turn into opportunities for local employment and environmental restoration appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

From the beginning, Shell’s flagship Appalachian petrochemical complex was delayed and its startup mired in malfunction. At 8 a.m. on Sept. 6, just 12 hours and 15 minutes after Shell first introduced ethane to the high-pressure furnaces that begin to “crack” the gas into plastic, brown gasses vented from the flares that function as the facility’s primary pollution controls, violating the corporation’s permits. Since then, a litany of malfunctions have cast a shadow on the facility, leaking hundreds of tons of hazardous chemical emissions into the surrounding Ohio River Valley.

The plastics plant began operating last autumn along the banks of the Ohio River in Beaver County, buoyed by the largest taxpayer subsidy in Pennsylvania history. The $6 billion, 386-acre facility reached full capacity and produced its first polyethylene pellet on Nov. 21.

By mid-May, Shell had reported to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection [DEP] at least 31 additional malfunctions that caused flaring, excess emissions or spills at the facility. The DEP issued 15 notices of violation to Shell before a May 24 consent order and agreement levied a $10 million penalty against the corporation.

PublicSource reviewed more than 500 emails between Shell and the DEP as well as internal agency communications and public records. The agency withheld 1,426 records, indicating that they were exempt from disclosure under the Right-to-Know Law because they involved attorney work products or communications between the DEP and its lawyers, discussed confidential settlement discussions or internal deliberations, or included information from complainants.

Here’s a look inside nine months of DEP monitoring of Shell during which the company repeatedly violated state law and exceeded emissions limits for an array of hazardous chemicals and pollutants.

Read more: Allegheny County’s handling of asphalt company’s pollution request leaves some feeling paved over

The documents suggest a pattern of inconsistent DEP responsiveness in critical situations and indicate that the state agency relied on Shell to assess the extent of its own mishaps and the validity of some citizen complaints. 

In response to PublicSource’s request for an interview, the DEP sent a written statement indicating that its inspectors have been “onsite and in the community frequently since the facility began operating, often multiple times per week.”  The agency said it has conducted more than 150 inspections at the facility, and emphasized that it “conducts random unannounced inspections more frequently at this facility than DEP and EPA guidance recommends.”

Shell representatives did not respond to requests for comment as of publication.

September 5: A troubled beginning

From when ethane was first introduced on Sept. 5 and through Oct. 7, numerous issues plagued the plant. Loose bolts and incorrect calibrations, “unsteady amounts” of gasses, a failed mechanical seal and new equipment “plugged with debris” caused over 350 tons of excess volatile organic compound [VOC] emissions at the complex, including benzene and toluene, malfunction reports show.

Read more: The citizen scientists of crackerland: Armed with buckets and hunting plastic pellets, neighbors prepare for the petro plant next door

The DEP conducted 55 routine inspections at the facility between September 2022 and May 24. Reports show a repeated procedure: Park near the facility. Watch for visible emissions. Smell for smells that shouldn’t be there. 

Inspection reports show that DEP inspectors did not use FLIR imaging cameras (which can show otherwise-invisible emissions) until June 22, nor did they use any other technical or sampling equipment to monitor the facility during routine inspections. 

Since September 2022, the DEP’s routine inspections have been completed by a single inspector (except for three that were completed by an environmental trainee).

September 26: Malfunction report doesn’t materialize

At 1:42pm, Shell Environmental Manager Kim Kaal left a voicemail for a DEP official: “I’m calling to report visible emissions,” she said, noting that the plant had exceeded the reporting limit of five minutes of visible emissions in a two-hour period. “We will prepare and submit a malfunction report.” 

The records reviewed by PublicSource do not show any formal malfunction report by Shell for that date, nor a DEP notice of violation for the incident.

November 7: ‘Too long a list’ of malfunctions

On Oct. 7, Shell’s Kaal left a voicemail for a DEP official to notify the agency that they would be shutting down the ethane cracking unit for repairs due to “performance issues” and several malfunctions caused by a clogged strainer, according to the report.

The cracking unit came back online 10 days later on Oct. 17. On Nov. 7, Shell Environmental Engineer Alan Binder left a message for the DEP’s environmental program manager for the air quality program in its Southwest office, Mark Gorog; Binder called to report malfunctions, noting “too long a list” for a voicemail.

The startup malfunctions were to some extent expected: Shell’s Kaal circulated a draft list of would-be mishaps to the DEP for discussion on Sept. 21, most of which Shell believed would result in elevated flaring emissions. (Flaring, which burns off excess emissions to relieve pressure, functions as the primary pollution control and safety device for the plant.) A Jan. 30 emission exceedance report by Shell maintained that excess emissions during startup “are not atypical, and are extremely difficult to avoid when starting up a brand-new facility.” 

By October, Shell had emitted over 660 tons of VOCs and would violate its 12-month rolling emissions limit each month through April. The company also exceeded its limits for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides [NOx] and hazardous air pollutants. 

At the beginning of 2023, Shell began to supply VOC emissions data using a new method that the DEP rejected, noting that, “Shell has not demonstrated that these results are appropriate.” 

December 24: No answer on the emergency line

On Christmas Eve at 7:34 a.m., Shell’s Kaal emailed the DEP to report a malfunction and flaring at the facility: “I wanted you to know I made three calls, the first to the 24-hour after hours emergency number and it said ‘cannot connect your call,’ then I tried the complaints line and it said ‘please try again later.’” She added: “We are flaring in both the ground flares as well as the elevated flare today 12/24/22 beginning around 6:30 a.m.” 

A malfunction report submitted to the agency on Feb. 6 showed that the event resulted in excess emissions of 12.17 tons of VOCs and 9.09 tons of NOx. Shell attributed the malfunction to equipment failure due to extreme cold.

The DEP did not issue a notice of violation for the incident.

Listen: Shell Environmental Manager Kim Kaal reports calling the DEP emergency line on Dec. 24, 2022

February 13: DEP emergency response

At 3:50 p.m., Shell’s Binder (a former DEP employee) called the agency multiple times, leaving voicemails for three DEP officials: “I’m trying to get a hold of somebody to let you know that we’re having an elevated flaring event at the site due to an upset in the ECU ethylene unit,” Binder said in a voicemail to DEP’s Gorog. He added: “We expect some complaints.”

“We are smoking currently. I’m watching it from my office,” Binder said in a message to another DEP official. “It’s not an imminent threat to my knowledge.”

After receiving several complaints, the department dispatched DEP air quality specialist Scott Beaudway to the facility in what would be the only emergency response by the agency to date, per the records. 

In a Feb. 13 email to other DEP officials, Gorog wrote: “They [Shell] do not believe there is any danger to the public as the elevated flare is designed to handle the full capacity.”

When Beaudway arrived, he observed visible emissions at two of the three flares and took photographs, but did not smell any malodors, according to his report. Beaudway spoke with two Shell representatives who described the incident to him and also told him that one of the flares “broke its glycol seal, venting a mixture of water and glycol onto Shell Chemical’s property.” Ethylene glycol is toxic, and exposure can cause damage to the nervous system, skin, kidneys, and respiratory system.

Beaudway wrote: “[Shell] did survey the area and did not observe any of the glycol/water mixture on the public road or adjacent river. Shell will resume their investigation in the morning when it’s light.”

DEP officials met with Shell the following week to discuss the event, emails show.

On March 30, Shell environmental engineer Jason Shultz sent an email to a DEP official detailing the company’s investigation of the incident, noting that an “estimated 7,400 gallons of ethylene glycol” had been released, and a portion had made it to the ground. Shell observed a “droplet pattern” on the site’s roadways, which the company swept. 

The incident caused excess emissions of 6.41 tons of VOCs and 4.12 tons of NOx.

March 3: Mystery ‘booms,’ no info from Shell

A DEP official emailed Shell’s Kaal, noting the agency had received complaints of “really bad” air quality and “several loud booms from the plant.” The official asked Kaal to “address if the concern of loud booms [came] from the plant.” Kaal responded: “I am certainly unaware of anything that would result in a ‘boom’ from the plant. We will look into this complaint and get back to you, thank you.”

An hour and a half later, Kaal replied again: “There is no indication of bad air quality. There also has not been anything definitive which we believe may have caused noise. We are continuing to look into this.” 

The next DEP inspection occurred six days later on March 9, and records do not indicate any other follow-up by the agency.

March 15: A flaring hotspot 

On the morning of March 15, a DEP official emailed Shell’s Kaal to ask if the company had flared the night before. “I also have a report of ‘spraying down the tower with water and a hose,’” the official wrote. Kaal responded that yes, they had flared, but she was “unaware of any water spraying.” 

Asked by DEP to look into the spraying, Kaal responded that it was likely to mitigate a “refractory hot spot” on one of the ground flares, a “temporary preventative measure” until the company could take the flare out of service for inspection and repair.

In an email to fellow officials on March 16 concerning the flaring and the agency’s response, DEP Director of Communications Neil Shader wrote: “For an immediate statement can we say that Shell has alerted us to the flaring incident and that we are reviewing the information they’ve submitted to us?

“Also, can we ask Shell very nicely to stop doing this? (this one probably isn’t feasible I know).”

On March 25, Shell shut down production to repair damage at the facility. The corporation initiated an array of temporary repairs, which included replacing damaged steel and installing heat-resistant materials to fix the hotspot. VOC emissions from the facility continued throughout the shutdown, Shell’s monitoring data shows.

April 12: ‘Heavy fluids’ in the wastewater, benzene in the air

On Jan. 25, Shell’s Binder left a voicemail for a DEP official to report an off-site odor noticed by the company’s emergency response team. The odor continued until Feb. 16, according to Shell reports, but DEP routine inspections on Jan. 26 and 30, and on Feb. 2, 8 and 9 followed the typical procedure and did not detect malodors.

On March 2, Shell sent DEP pictures of a “sheen” on the surface of its biotreater, and on March 7, Kaal submitted a request for permission to install temporary equipment to better control the flow of hydrocarbons into the wastewater treatment plant. 

“Please expedite the review if at all possible, we plan to install the unit as soon as available to improve performance of our waste water treatment system,” Kaal wrote.

On April 3, Kaal emailed DEP again to check on the status of the request, which wouldn’t be approved by the agency until April 10, over a month later.

On April 12, Binder left a voicemail for a DEP official to report another “off-site odor event,” which began on the prior afternoon. “We think this is emanating from our wastewater treatment plant system,” he said, and attributed the odor to an “accidental bypass” of “heavy fluids” to the treatment plant. 

Later on April 12, Kaal sent photos to the DEP of the treatment plant and included an image of some foam that had escaped to the Ohio River. “At any distance from the outfall this would not be observable whatsoever,” she concluded. 

An on-site DEP inspection at noon that day — in response to an odor complaint and a report of 5,000 gallons of benzene discharged into the wastewater treatment plant [WWTP] — found intermittent odors while driving near the facility, but the DEP inspector could not gain access “due to the air atmosphere in the area. The facility was only allowing personnel who were respirator certified to access the WWTP,” the inspector noted in his report. 

About an hour later, a DEP routine inspection did not observe any malodors, according to reports. A Shell malfunction report noted that the malodors began April 11 and ended April 20, but five routine DEP inspection reports between those dates did not include mention of malodors. 

Shell’s fenceline monitoring system recorded average benzene readings that reached up to 12 times the EPA action limit for the known carcinogen for a two-week period ending April 13. 

The facility leaked 219 pounds of benzene in a 24-hour period, more than 21 times the reportable quantity governed by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act [CERCLA], per Shell’s malfunction report.

The company called the release “sudden and unplanned”.

On April 19, Kaal told a DEP official that the temporary hydrocarbon controls were being installed, and the odor event concluded the following day.

May 24: Consent order and agreement

On May 24, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced a consent order and agreement between the state and Shell. Emails show the DEP had met with Shell since early January to discuss terms for the agreement, which acts as a blanket enforcement action for the numerous violations the corporation accumulated during its startup.

“Environmental protection is not only about avoiding violations, but it’s also about accountability through strong enforcement and mitigation if violations do occur,” said DEP Secretary Rich Negrin in a statement to PublicSource. Adding: “As a trustee of the environment, DEP is prioritizing accountability.” 

The agreement sets more stringent monitoring and reporting requirements for the facility and levies a $10 million penalty against the corporation. Shell profits last year were $39.9 billion.

Shell ended its shutdown that began March 25 and restarted production on May 24, the same day the consent order was announced.

Correction (8/8/2023): A previous version of this article misidentified the DEP employee who was dispatched to the Feb. 13 incident at Shell. Mark Gorog’s position with the DEP was also imprecise; he is the environmental program manager for the air quality program in DEP’s Southwest Regional Office.

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on Instagram @quinnglabicki.

This story was fact-checked by Ladimir Garcia.

The post Inside Pennsylvania’s monitoring of the Shell petrochemical complex appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

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Chances are, you’ve been building the skills needed to do citizen science projects already — obsessive pandemic bird feeder watching, anyone? — so recording and sharing your observations are a natural next step. What’s more, getting youngsters involved in projects like these now may make that middle school science project way easier years later.

Most of these projects require minimal training — the ability to count and an interest in nature are the basic tools needed. You likely have the other equipment, like a pair of binoculars, a porch light, and yes, even your smartphone.

The following projects allow for casual participation and are easy to do with young children. And with frequencies varying from a single day per year to weekly and season-long runs, you are sure to find a project that will satisfy the nature nerds in your life.

As far as ease of participation and accessibility go, Firefly Watch is the perfect gateway project to get folks of all ages into citizen science.

“You just have to be old enough to count, and be sighted,” says Alex Dohan, the statewide education department coordinator at Mass Audubon, and coordinator of Firefly Watch. “It’s definitely family-friendly.”

Firefly Watch started in 2008 and was originally based at the Museum of Science in Boston. When its founder retired, the project was taken over by Mass Audubon — the oldest Audubon organization in the country — where Dohan has managed it since 2018.

Participants are asked to spend 10 minutes per week watching fireflies — alias lightning bugs — in their backyard, or in another habitat they can visit consistently. During those 10 minutes, they’ll count the fireflies during three 10-second intervals, taking note of their flashing patterns.

Data is reported through an online form. The counting period varies by region, but in Western Pennsylvania, it would be mid-May through late August.

If you’d like to encourage more fireflies to visit your backyard, Dohan offers these tips:

• Leave as much leaf cover as you can, to allow firefly larvae to burrow under it and hatch the following year.
• Turn off any outdoor lighting that isn’t needed for safety, or install motion-sensor lights. Avoid bug zapper-style gadgets, because they’ll kill fireflies, too.
• Don’t use pesticides on your lawn, and mow it less often — every two weeks or less.

Aside from the beauty of their soft glow on a summer evening, Dohan points to more practical benefits of having lightning bugs around. “If you don’t want slugs in your garden, firefly larvae are a good thing to have,” she says.

Turkeys are clearly the star birds of the fall season, for better or worse, but the time to look for them is during the summer. If you’ve seen turkeys wandering around your yard or community, wild turkey biologist Mary Jo Casalena of the Pennsylvania Game Commission wants to know about it.

“The objective of the survey is to know what the reproductive success of wild turkeys is across the state,” Casalena says. “That helps us to assess population trends to determine the structure of the hunting season and what implements can be used.”

All you need to do is count the number of “big birds and little birds,” per the PA Game Commission’s website. At this time of year, that’s easy, because baby turkeys — called poults — are still quite small. Casalena is particularly interested in what she calls the “hen-to-poult ratio.” (Males can be counted and reported, too.)

While there has been a Wild Turkey Sighting Survey conducted in Pennsylvania since 1953, it was only in 2016 that the PA Game Commission invited the public to participate. Previously, data was collected only by commission staff, which limited the observation area. 

“We were capturing a large enough sample size for statistics, but we weren’t capturing enough from different habitats across the state, like people’s backyards,” Casalena says. “When we engaged the public, we were increasing the sample size significantly.”

Casalena compiles an annual report for each sighting survey’s results, and the data is shared with approximately 30 states.

The current Wild Turkey Sighting Survey began on July 1 and runs through Aug. 31. The observation reporting form, as well as photos to help you identify the sex of the birds, are available on the PA Game Commission’s website. Any turkeys you find can be counted, whether they’re on your own property, walking along the road, in a cemetery, or in other public areas. 

A turkey hunter herself, Casalena is quick to point out that the data collected in the survey is for research only. 

“Turkey hunters never like to let other people know where the turkeys are,” she says. “[Survey] data is only used for population tracking and not for law enforcement, and the public can’t see it, either. So hunters aren’t giving up their ‘honey pots’ by participating in the survey.”

A second annual turkey survey takes place in winter, typically from Jan. 1 to March 1. 

“The winter survey helps us locate where we can trap turkeys in the winter and put leg bands on them for research purposes,” Casalena says. 

If you find a turkey with a leg band, alive or dead, Casalena asks that folks use the information on the band to report it. “That’s another way of helping with citizen science,” she says.

Step outside at night and turn on a light — that’s all it takes to attract moths to your yard and observe their eerie beauty. And that’s exactly how easy it is to participate in National Moth Week, according to co-founder Liti Haramaty.

“Any light that is close to a place [the moths] can rest on” will do, says Haramaty.

A marine biologist at Rutgers University, Haramaty co-founded National Moth Week (the last full week of July each year) with entomologist David Moskowitz in 2012, expanding on moth nights the two had organized in earlier years.

“To my surprise, it was a great success,” she says.

The week has two goals. The first, Haramaty says, is “to collect data on moth distribution and biodiversity.” The second? “To just get people outside and looking at the wildlife in their backyards.”

While other projects require counting or collecting data, all you need to do for National Moth Week is take photos once your light and resting spot are set up (a white wall or white cloth will do). Participants then submit photos using the iNaturalist app, Project Noah website or a number of other platforms. The organization also runs a flickr group where participants share their findings.

“There are 10 times more species of moths than butterflies — many of them have not been discovered yet,” Haramaty says. “New species have already been discovered from photographs people have submitted. You don’t have to know what the picture is of — just upload it and other people will identify it for you.”

It may be easy to dismiss moths as pests, but that’s not how Haramaty sees it. “Moths are very important ecologically,” she says. “They are pollinators, especially for species of flowers that open at night. They’re also a food source for bats and birds; many of the caterpillars will be eaten by hatching chicks.”

Several local organizations have scheduled events for this year’s National Moth Week, including the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, Latodami Nature Center and Tree Pittsburgh at Northern Tier Regional Library.

If you’re a fan of things that go “croak” in the night, then FrogWatch USA is the project for you. 

Cori Richards-Zawacki, a professor of biology at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology, has been training Western Pennsylvanians to track local frog species since 2016 (full disclosure: this author is a trained frog watcher).

She and her colleague, Chris Davis, identified FrogWatch “as an easy extension of their existing outreach programs.”

“It’s an easy way that we can keep tabs on amphibians,” Richards-Zawacki says. “There are many threats facing amphibians right now, including disease.”

Frog watchers are trained to monitor wetland habitats, identify the calls of local frog and toad species, and then report their data through a standardized online form. Monitoring takes place after sunset and can occur year-round, as even the absence of calls is valuable information.

“These populations can blink out while we’re not looking,” Richards-Zawacki says. “Having as many ears and eyes on the ground as possible is helpful against that.”

While it can be more challenging to find wetlands to monitor in the city, trained frog watchers can monitor any wetland habitat, including man-made ponds in Western Pennsylvania.

Training sessions typically happen in the late winter, as frogs are preparing to emerge from their cold weather hideouts. Richards-Zawacki and her team provide detailed information on the frog species native to Western Pennsylvania and how to report calling activity. Since the pandemic, the Pymatuning team has conducted all training via Zoom.

“One benefit of Zoom training is that now we can hand over our PowerPoint presentation to participants and they can play the embedded frog call files as many times as they want,” Richards-Zawacki says.

“I’m surprised at how many people know things about their local wetlands already, and they’re in tune with the habitats around them,” Richards-Zawacki says of participants. “There’s a lot of folks out there that are in tune with their environment and I’m always excited to see young people interested in the project.”

Richards-Zawacki credits citizen science with laying the foundation of her own career in biology.

“I got involved in science myself as a young teenager because of participating in a similar project in my home state of Michigan,” she says. “So I’m a good example of how important programs like this are in getting people involved in science and interested in nature.”

In terms of tradition, the Christmas Bird Count has the other citizen science projects beat: It’s the oldest in the country, dating back to 1900. According to Brian Shema, operations director for the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, our area has been part of the project since its earliest years. 

“We have data in Pittsburgh to 1903,” he says. “From about 1950 on, we have a really complete set of data.”

Prior to the start of the bird count, hunters observed a tradition known as the Christmas Side Hunt, during which groups of hunters would split into two groups, with the winning side bagging the most birds and other critters. An early Audubon official, ornithologist Frank Chapman, proposed a counter-tradition — an annual Christmas Bird Census.

The highly coordinated project occurs annually on the Saturday following Christmas Day. Shema is the official compiler for Western Pennsylvania’s count, which also means that he coordinates all participation. 

“We welcome families, newcomers, but they need to contact me to participate,” Shema says.

All counting happens within designated “count circles,” each of which is 15 miles in diameter. If your backyard happens to be within one of the circles, you can count at home, or you could count in a park or other area. Shema says he regularly pairs up families or individuals with groups of experienced birders to count together.

While it’s not strictly necessary, the Audubon Society does offer training sessions on how to conduct a count, during which volunteer naturalists go over counting methods and bird identification skills.

“We want to make sure people feel comfortable and be sure that they’re equipped to participate,” Shema says.

“Because the Christmas Bird Count is done in these prescribed circles and on the same day every year, we can track changes in bird ranges,” Shema says. “That’s the power of citizen science — without all the people participating, we would never be able to count all the birds we need to count.”

Great Backyard Bird Count

If staying closer to home and having date flexibility is more your speed, you’ll want to check out the Great Backyard Bird Count. Run by the National Audubon Society and Cornell Lab of Ornithology, this project takes place over a four-day period every February. 

Participants spend at least 15 minutes on one of the four designated days counting each bird they see or hear during the time period. After identifying the species using a field guide or similar tool, all data is reported directly through the eBird or Merlin Bird ID mobile apps.

“There’s not as many people involved to assist, but it’s more flexible,” Shema says.

You can participate even if you don’t have a backyard. This bird count accepts data from anywhere you find birds, even along your street or in a public park.

“In wintertime, we are counting resident birds, non-migrating birds,” Shema says. “The wintertime birds are the ones we share habitat with for our whole lifetimes.”

Melanie Linn Gutowski is a historian and museum educator.

The post How you can get involved in science from your own Pennsylvania backyard appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

As Pennsylvania vies for a slice of $8 billion in federal funding to build out a hydrogen hub, elected officials and interest groups representing industry, labor and environmental advocacy are jockeying for policy that could shape how the energy technology is deployed in the commonwealth. 

In late 2022, former Gov. Tom Wolf signed off on legislation that implemented tax incentives for hydrogen production. Act 108 passed with bipartisan support, though it faced criticism for being rapidly pushed through the legislature without public input.

Just over eight months later, as the Department of Energy prepares to decide which hydrogen hub proposals get the green light, new legislation aims to align hydrogen development with decarbonization goals.

The legislation was authored in part by a member of the Natural Resources Defense Council [NRDC], an environmental advocacy group whose regional director, Jackson Morris, chairs Gov. Josh Shapiro’s working group on climate change.

“Hydrogen can be used to get us to carbon neutrality or it can be used to perpetuate fossil fuels and keep us from getting to carbon neutrality, depending on how we approach it,” said Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware County, who chairs the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.

But his House Bill 1215 hit a legislative speed bump last week after Shapiro’s administration and others asked for time to review it. 

The bill faces criticism from industry and labor advocates who say it is at odds with a bipartisan majority of the Pennsylvania legislature and runs counter to the federal government’s goal of building hydrogen hubs nationally, one of which must be fossil-fuel based.

“We should be doing everything we can to use the great energy asset we have underneath our feet,” said Ken Zapinski of Pittsburgh Works Together, an organization that works with industry and labor interests. 

But climate advocates say a hydrogen hub must respond to a changing climate.

“There is a tension between making the hydrogen hubs happen and making it happen in a way that gets to carbon neutrality,” said Vitali. “It’s important to educate people that hydrogen hubs could be something that helps — or hurts — the environment.”

‘Massive loophole’ or necessary option?

The NRDC called Act 108 “deeply flawed” and criticized the 2022 legislation for being brought to a vote “in less than 24 hours without a single hearing or opportunity for public input.” 

The NRDC also said a subsidy created by the act for hydrogen production using natural gas is a “massive loophole.”

Vitali’s bill, which was written in part by the NRDC’s Pete Budden, is designed to give greater guidance to how hydrogen tax credits are allocated in the state. 

The bill would amend Act 108 so that hydrogen producers only get the tax break if the hydrogen is produced with low greenhouse gas emissions (including methane leaks in the case of so-called blue hydrogen made from natural gas). “Which means with regard to blue hydrogen, about 90% of the CO2 [carbon dioxide] is being captured,” to trigger the tax break, offered Vitali.

The bill also adds an enhanced tax credit for the cleanest “green” hydrogen and restricts tax credits to areas where electrification is not possible, like steel and cement making. 

“The broad goal is to make sure that we’re incentivizing low-CO2 emission hydrogen and only for hard-to-decarbonize uses,” said Vitali.

HB 1215 would be “a really good example of how to do it right,” said Budden, who leads NRDC’s state- and regional-level hydrogen policy work.

At the national level, the U.S. Treasury Department is developing guidelines for a federal hydrogen tax credit stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act. Colorado passed the first state green hydrogen standards this year. 

Could Pennsylvania follow suit?

Vitali said HB 1215’s prospects hinge on the blessing of the Shapiro administration, which walks a fine line between support of climate-related decarbonization and the interests of organized labor and industry. The legislation was set to be considered in committee last Tuesday, but the vote was postponed when the Shapiro administration and others raised concerns, Vitali said. 

The Shapiro Administration did not respond to PublicSource’s requests for comment on the specifics of their concerns with HB 1215.

Vitali’s approach has drawn open criticism from advocates for industry and labor. 

“I don’t think it’s good policy,” said Zapinski, whose organization includes among its partner organizations gas giants Peoples and Energy Transfer.

Federal legislation dictates that at least one hydrogen hub must use fossil fuel as a feedstock and at least two must be located in natural gas-abundant regions, conditions that won the support of West Virginia’s Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.

“Folks who are opposed to hydrogen from natural gas, they’re certainly entitled to their opinion,” said Zapinski. “But the Biden administration and Department of Energy have made it clear this is a technology they want to see explored.”

‘Green’ and ‘blue’ hydrogen

At a House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee hearing in late May, members heard testimony that questioned the viability of natural gas-based blue hydrogen as a decarbonization tool.

Hydrogen can be transported, stored and ultimately combusted with zero carbon footprint. But it takes energy to separate the hydrogen from other molecules. 

Today, 96% of global hydrogen production is powered by fossil fuels and is known as gray hydrogen. Hydrogen separated from water using electricity from renewable sources is known as green hydrogen. Blue hydrogen would be made with natural gas, and the resulting carbon emissions from that process would be captured and buried deep underground.

“Blue hydrogen is not a solution,” Robert Howarth told the committee. An earth systems scientist at Cornell University and a member of the New York State Climate Action Council, an agency responsible for implementing New York’s climate action plan, Howarth authored 2021 research which found that “far from being low carbon, greenhouse gas emissions from the production of blue hydrogen are quite high.” 

“You’re better off just burning natural gas,” he told the committee.

Howarth admitted that vast stores of methane in the Marcellus shale are an attractive resource, but cautioned that the sizable greenhouse gas footprint undermines its viability when it comes to decarbonization.

“The key is green hydrogen and making that green hydrogen from renewable electricity,” he concluded. 

The proposed Western Pennsylvania hydrogen hub, though, the Decarbonization Network of Appalachia [DNA], is indeed betting on blue. 

Pennsylvania lags when it comes to solar and wind, and advocates for blue hydrogen argue that there just isn’t enough renewable energy to support green hydrogen. “Green hydrogen is based on the premise that there would be enough renewable energy produced,” said Tom Murphy, a senior managing director of Team Pennsylvania, a nonprofit serving as the formal applicant for the DNA proposal. “We’re looking at a viable alternative here that is commercially available now.”

For organized labor, the color of the hydrogen hardly matters as much as the jobs it provides, and for the boilermakers in particular, blue hydrogen represents economic opportunity. “We strongly support it because of the opportunity it provides for our members,” said Martin Williams, national coordinator of state legislative affairs for the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers. 

Thousands of boilermakers are going to be needed to build the hydrogen economy, he said.

The DNA proposal competes with 32 others nationally, including two others in the state: the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub [MACH2] in the east, and the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub [ARCH2]. All three were given notices of encouragement by the Department of Energy, which is set to announce which six to 10 projects will receive funding this fall after a lengthy and opaque process.

It remains to be seen what state and federal policy will govern and incentivize projects that at this stage are only ideas; a hydrogen hub has never been built before. 

“If we really care about climate change, we ought to be really developing wind and solar and hydro, and there are so many more things that are much more cost effective in getting us to carbon neutrality,” ventured Vitali. He pointed to Pennsylvania’s relatively apathetic renewable energy goals and stalled participation in the multi-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

“I appreciate the fact that hydrogen should be part of our future,” Vitali said. “But frankly, I’m a little skeptical.”

Quinn Glabicki is the environment and climate reporter at PublicSource and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at quinn@publicsource.org and on Twitter and Instagram @quinnglabicki.

This story was fact-checked by Elizabeth Szeto.

The post As feds move toward decision on hydrogen hubs, players jockey for PA policy appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.