By Kiley Bense

The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board called Norfolk Southern’s conduct during the board’s investigation of the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine “unconscionable” at a meeting this week to finalize the NTSB’s findings.

By Kiley Bense

Every year in late June, Peggy Butler and her husband, Ken, welcome visitors to rural northwestern Pennsylvania for the chance to glimpse the rare and beguiling Photinus carolinus. This firefly species flashes synchronously, creating dazzling spectacles of light. The abundance of fireflies on their property in Forest County—there are at least 17 species in addition to the synchronous firefly—led the Butlers to found the Pennsylvania Firefly Festival. 

By Kiley Bense

Residents of East Palestine, Ohio, and nearby areas in Pennsylvania harmed by the Norfolk Southern train disaster say a new $310 million settlement announced by the Biden administration on May 23 will not meet their communities’ most urgent needs, like access to health care for chronic conditions that emerged after the derailment.  

By Kiley Bense

In 2007, a geoscientist at Penn State named Terry Engelder calculated that Pennsylvania could be sitting on more than 50 trillion cubic feet of accessible natural gas deposits. Engelder later revised his calculation upward, to 489 trillion cubic feet, enough to meet U.S. natural gas demand for 18 years. These massive numbers set off the fracking boom in Pennsylvania, leading to drilling across the state. Since the rush began, there have been 13,000 unconventional wells drilled in Pennsylvania.

By Jon Hurdle

Backers of a planned “hydrogen hub”’ in the Appalachian region have issued a document responding to criticism by environmentalists, saying that carbon capture and sequestration technology would mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from the project and that the hydrogen it produced would ultimately protect “environmental justice” communities from pollution currently emitted by heavy industry. 

By Kiley Bense

Once a month for nearly two years, Evan Clark, the Waterkeeper at Three Rivers Waterkeeper, a water quality advocacy organization based in Pittsburgh, has traveled by boat along the Ohio River to Shell’s enormous new plastics plant in Beaver County. 

By Kiley Bense

Clutching a sheaf of typed notes with one hand and the steering wheel of her electric car with the other, Maya van Rossum was driving west on I-276 and practicing the message she planned to deliver to Pennsylvania’s governor later that morning when she realized—belatedly—that she was going to need a cough drop. The plan for the protest depended on her ability to out-shout the governor’s microphone, derailing his speech, and now she couldn’t stop clearing her throat. 

By Kiley Price

In 2022, the oil and gas company Shell began operations at its new plastics plant in Monaca, Pennsylvania, a town in Beaver County, about 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

By Kiley Bense

In 2014, when Jackie Shock-Stewart and her husband Matt Stewart first moved to Beaver County, Pennsylvania, they were only vaguely aware of plans to build a petrochemical facility in this largely suburban county on the western edge of the state.

By Quinn Glabicki, PublicSource

This article was originally published by PublicSource, a nonprofit newsroom serving the Pittsburgh region. Sign up for its free weekly newsletters at publicsource.org.