Environment & Energy

The road has been cleared to a Marcellus Shale drilling site in Moshannon State Forest in Clearfield County. A Bureau of Forestry spokesman says a few protesters were still in the area today but debris has been removed from the roadway.

EQT suspended operations at the gas well Sunday morning when an estimated 50 activists from Marcellus Shale Earth First! blocked access to the site.

The high temperatures are not only affecting the people of Pittsburgh, but the agriculture in the area as well. Several crops have been forced into early harvest and keeping them hydrated has been quite a chore for local farmers.

There's been another acci­dent at a north­east­ern Penn­syl­va­nia drilling site: 4,700 gal­lons of hydrochlo­ric acid spilled at a Leroy Town­ship, Brad­ford County well pad oper­ated by Chief Oil and Gas on Wednesday.

The spill comes two weeks after a thirty-foot methane geyser erupted near a Shell nat­ural gas well in nearby Union Town­ship, Tioga County.

Leroy is the same town­ship where a Chesa­peake Energy well suf­fered a 10,000-gallon frack­ing fluid blowout in 2011.

Pittsburgh is home to what may be the world's greenest greenhouse. The production greenhouse facility at Phipps Conservatory has received a first-of-its-kind Platinum certification under the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance program.

"We believe they're the first greenhouses ever to be certified under this program, which is pretty exciting," Executive Director Piacentini said, "and not only did we get them certified, but we got the absolute highest category that you can get."

A 5-year law extension, signed during the budget debate last week by Governor Corbett, will enable the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to continue to carry out its job of preventing and cleaning contamination caused by abandoned and/or leaking underground storage tanks. The program, which would have expired Saturday, has been extended through June 30, 2017.

Members of the Student Conservation Association's (SCA) Green Cities Sustainability Corps program have fanned out throughout the region to work to implement climate action plans. It is all part of the service-learning projects taken on by the students and young adults in the program that aims to introduce initiatives to ensure a sustainable future.

Citizen-based group PennEnvironment is applauding state lawmakers for working to restore funding to a couple of programs that had been on the chopping block in Governor Tom Corbett's initial budget proposal. Still, the group isn't over the moon about the recently-passed spending plan.

"The best you can say about the budget when it comes to the environment is it could have been a lot worse. Fortunately there were a number of rollbacks that were passed as part of the budget," said PennEnvironment Director David Masur.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission is looking to crack down on all-terrain vehicle (ATV) use on game lands and leased properties. The board of Game Commissioners proposed game commission officials be allowed to cite those who are illegally operating an ATV or snowmobile on game lands.

Jerry Feaser, Press Secretary for the Commission, said without the authority, there is no guarantee justice will be served.

There's a different kind of Christmas in July happening in the Allegheny National Forest these evenings: fireflies are lighting up in sync.

"I guess the best way to describe them is a string of Christmas lights, flashing on and off at the same time," said Peggy Butler, who along with her husband owns the Black Caddis Ranch Bed and Breakfast in the forest.

On a hot, sunny day in Pittsburgh, a couple dozen teenagers were tending to tiny seedlings at Tree Pittsburgh's Tree Seedling Nursery in Point Breeze. They were there as part of Operation Better Block's Jr. Green Corps, an initiative that provides Homewood youth with structured activities in an effort to impact their physical environment, equip them for leadership roles in the community, and provide them with an opportunity to explore green collar jobs and careers.

Garden aficionados will get a chance to tour some North Side urban gardens Saturday June 30th while at the same time helping to fund Northside Common Ministries. The annual walk raises money to help provide food and shelter for homeless men.

The tour leaves from the group's Food Pantry and Homeless Men's Shelter and wraps up in West Park with a concert featuring local band the Whiskey Holler.

When you drill for nat­ural gas, for every gal­lon of gas pro­duced, some amount of waste­water gets cre­ated as well.

Some­times it can be sim­ple brine that can be dis­posed of in sim­ple ways, such as using it to melt snow on Pennsylvania's roads in win­ter. Or it is used to keep the dust down in summer.