Environmentalism as Political Performance Art in Pennsylvania

In light of the disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, we're talking about environmental policy and enforcement in Pennsylvania. (Spoiler Alert: it ain't all that good.)

Host Jesse White offers first-hand insights into how Pennsylvania political leaders (Democrats and Republicans) routinely ignore environmental and public health problems because they refuse to hold industry accountable. It's a blunt and honest critique that everyone who cares about our air and water needs to hear.

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Transcript

[jesse]: 0:36

Hi, and welcome to this Keystone reckoning podcast. this is your host Jessie White. You'll forgive me if I'm kind of looking off into the distance a little bit as I'm recording here. I'm trying something a little different. We're in to be broadcasting alive And had to just prove that we're alive. Gus just stuck his head in the door and had something to say to me. So we're broadcasting alive and on both our Facebook and Youtube channels to try to get a little interaction going that way. So the reason that I wanted to hop on today and in the topic for this podcast is in light of the situation in East Palestine, Ohio, which obviously very serious, and I'm in no way trying To make light of that, but I thought it might be useful for us to use that as a lens by which we could look across the border here into Pensylvania and talk about how Pensylvania handles environmental policy and spoiler alert. It's not that great, and for any of you that know me, you know, this is an issue that's kind of near and dear to my heart, so I'm gonna be probably a little more blunt than I usually am. If you're watching online, please feel Free to jump in on the comments I'd love to hear from you. Uh, so here's the deal in a nutshell, Pensylvania, environmental policy, In terms of and by policy, I mean, both policy as written and policy as enacted are not great. Policy as written isn't too bad. Depending on what you're looking at, policy as enacted is really really terrible. and it goes back As far as you want to go back in recent history. You could find examples. I'll be. I'm going to keep my frame of reference to kind of modern history, which is, you know, the last twenty years or so so. On the governor side, you know you had Edred Dell. You had Tom Corbett, who obviously was you know, didn't even hide the fact that he was you know, catering to the fossil fuel industory. Then you had Tom Wolf, and now obviously we have Joshhapiro. I don't think it's really fair to lump Josh into all of this because he's been in office for a grand total of about you know, in the grand scheme of things, five minutes, So that's not really a fair. A fair enough time to really lump him in with all that, But here's the bottom line, Pensylvania, despite what you may want to think, is very much politically Taylor to the fossil fuel industry and to industry in general, you know the railroads, the infrastructure. The you know, the actual producers. That's who they cater to. That's that's That's who were there here for. And if you know anything about this, you know, but I don't. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. right? I mean, the reality bears it out, but let's no pun intended. Let's do a little bit of a deeper drill into what exactly I'm talking about. So I want to also preface this by saying you know, usually on this podcast it's standard procedure just to deep an ize Republicans. I am not letting the Democrats off the hook here, and Some ways it's even more infuriating, because the Republicans don't really hide who they are right. They're like you were big business were big industry, and that's all there is to it. Democrats are different. They do a lot of signalling that there for environmental causes and environmental protections, but the actions and the words do not match up all that often, Not nearly as often as they should. So here's what we're talking about, Is that what you've seen in recent history is just straight up catering to the energy industry, Because jobs right, That's the currency that they use jobs, jobs, Jobs. You have to let us do whatever the hell we want, Because jobs, job, job, job jobs. Now, let's ignore for a minute the fact The the job numbers almost never line up with the promise. Okay, let's just throw that right out the window. even if that was accurate. The willingness to just ignore basic environmental protection because of the the political benefit. You know, everybody wants to be a job creator Is ridiculous, and on top of that, let's not pretend that one of the jobs that a lot of these folks are trying to protect are their own right. You know, the energy industry in Pensylvania is incredibly powerful Politically, lots and lots of money lobbies packs, and they are really really good at making sure everybody knows that they're like the one group you don't want to cross, You know, for the longest time, I would say the most influential lobby in Harrisburg in terms of big money, right, like you didn't hear a lot about it, But the big big money was the piper schools, Uh, uh, different, different privatization Syberiwot, Give go to too many details, but that was like the the The segment, the industry where they had the most sway. But the energy industry is very much overtaken that. and they, you know, and again, If you know anything about me, you know. I'm talking from personal experience here. Uh, you know there. their thing was. Don't even ask any questions. We are going to do what we want to do how we want to do it. And if you don't like it, you were an enemy of the state. You know that may sound extreme. right. Well, it's some pretty brash terminology, but it's just reality. I mean, that's how they looked at. I mean you got. Remember, this is the industry that brought in like the former military guys that were doing the cops tactics on local governments, Like you were the enemy, You weren't an opponent. You were the enemy. Now that nowadays is kind of like the default that we see in a lot of our politics. But when this all started fifteen years or so ago, you know, and I'm talking about with the natural gas, the oil and gas industry, you know, really coming into its own in Pensylvania, But when you know when that started, that was not the attitude that you generally saw. these guys came in and they were literally militant, Rolled up from Texas, planted a flag. And you know that was it. it was going to be their way of the highway. And it was. it was so short sighted, because all they did was you know, they would rather spend a million dollars trying to convince you that they were doing the right thing, then spend half a million dollars and actually do the right thing. I never did understand that. I still don't. I don't know if it was just some bravado. I don't know. I don't know what it was, but the problem was You have seen the political machine, By which I mean, like the official machine. House Senate governors just fold to these guys every single time every single time you know Rendell County. That was kind of. it was the beginning of all of it. He was kind of on the way out, but they definitely let them. kind of. uh. they didn't ask enough questions. The beginning Corbet. Obviously, you know, I mean the level of collusion and corruption And the Corbie administration and the energy industry was just it. would. It made you want to throw up. The more you knew about it, the more it just sickened you, because it was every bad thing you could imagine all rolled into one. You know, it got to the point where when we were down in south western Pennsylvania, you when we were when things would happen and they would get exposed. It was it was coordinated. You know, the energy industry Would come out and defend the Department of Environment Protection. The Department of Environ Protection would come out and defend the industry like publicly they would. They would cover each other's asses as a way to you know, basically attack the messenger at that point, and it certainly wasn't helped by the fact that you had you know the overwhelming majority of the media on the pay roll, and by which I mean advertisers. I'm not talking about bags of money. I'm talking about. Hey were putting big advertising money in Your newspaper into your station. Uh, and that definitely came with a price. It wasn't even like implied, like you're not going do a dirty. right. Oh no, it was more like you will not run any story that is going to make us look bad. M a k, And I mean, I had reporter friends, people that worked in the newsroom. S. they were like we are not allowed to write about this. We have been told explicitly not to write about it, and instead we have to do puff pieces. You know, I think that the name Range Resources obviously comes to mind again. If you know anything about me, you know that you know. That's the name that will be forever linked with my political, my political story. And they, they owned the whole operation, and if they didn't have you on the pay roll, so to speak, they had you so damn afraid that you may as well have been right. That was actually the brilliance of They. Did you know a lot of it? Wasn't you know? We're going to give you something because it would have cost them something right. It was more about being afraid of what happened if you didn't play ball as extortion. almost. and you know no one to be on the wrong side of these guys, and even you know the to give you an idea of just how bad it was. Let's look at the Wolf administration. So when Tom Wolf was running for office Was speaking with him. I was still in the state House then and we were talking. You know, he said. Well, what are the issues in your district? What's going on? This was twenty fourteen. I said, We've got a lot of environmental issues down here. A lot has been going on. Um, you know, with the drilling companies in the infrastructure around them, and there have been a lot of public health, concerned, serious things that have been in the national press and he said, Well, don't worry. we're going to tax those guys And I was like Well, okay, but that's not what we're talking about here, you know, and if you, if you know anybody that really cares about these issues in Pennsylvania, you know that taxing them was never popular. Because the second you tax them and you start to rely on that revenue stream, you've institutionalized the process. You basically guaranteed. Well Now we have to fract because, and we have to be this energy producing hub because otherwise we are missing that money. So they are not related. They were never rely And they were never. You know. they were never supposed to be related. So Wolf Rends beats corbit. One of the very few, like actual promises that Tom Wolf made when he ran was that he was going to take on the gas oiland gas industry, and he would tax them, which you know, in a lot of places know that weren't dealing with the environmental impact. That was the way to go right, Especially back then we needed revenue. They were, you know they were. We were The biggest state in terms of most activity without a severance tax. You know, it just seems like it makes sense. So what happened in that very first budget in twenty fifteen? Tom Wolf dropped the severance tax after the very first round of negotiations. Like not, Maybe not, sort of didn't even get anything for it. He just gave up on it, And I know what happened. The Republicans in the House of Senate that he had to negotiate with. We're like De. Don't. even. it's a non starter. Don't even bother at the same time. If you remember correctly, the initial H. secretary S of Dern environmental protection At the state level, John Hanger was one. The other one alludes me, but they were environmentalists. you know, they had. They had been aggressive in a good way on the oil and gas industry. Yeah, they got the boot pretty fast because you know clearly there was someone sat Governor Wolf down and said No, these are the rules. This is how it's going to be, and unfortunately he didn't really fight Back later in his term. There are actually some other things that came out in terms of permitting for pipe lines. And because you have to understand, people think drilling right is just drilling the well that that you know, there are issues there, But the real problem had to do with the infrastructure right. It was the pipe lines, it was the impadnments, it was the processing plants. It's you know, if you know what a pig launcher is right, doesn't even sound good. right. is there anything like? Is there such a thing as a good pig launcher? Well, the pig launchers were Thing. So he had all of these all this infrastructure going in and there was a lot that came out where you know Wolf administration. There were some emails where they were kind of playing ball in a not so great way with some of these companies, So the history for Democrats has not been great, and I will say this about Governorship hero. While he was attorney general, he did go after some of these companies in a way That nobody else had before Range resources. in particular, you know, filed criminal charges. You know, there were grand juries. Not for my money. Not nearly enough came from it, but at least it got out there. Another exception to be fair, is former Auditor General Eugene de Pasquali, who, before he got to the State House, which was what he did before he became Auditor General. he was actually Uh, deputy secretary at the D. P. and I could tell you, when he was the Auditor General, he did an audit, some of the water quality reporting and things like that that I worked with him on personally, and they're really good reports and they did their due diligence. Unfortunately, he's not prosecutor right. He didn't have the ability to actually go and prosecute anybody and make anybody accountable, But in terms of getting information out there, it was great, and in some ways you know that was the kind of thing that would piss me off more than anything, because once Got like out of the Rendell administration, and we're into the Corban administration. In the Wolf administration. There was no lack of information. It wasn't that we didn't know what was going on. it was that people were just too willing to look the other way and again, Democrats and Republicans. You know, a lot of people don't remember, And it's funny I popped up on my Facebook memories today that today I think was like the ninth anniversary of one of the the court decisions over Rolling Act Thirteen, Act, Their team, for those of you that don't remember was passed in twenty twelve and it was a. It was unbelievable, it was. It was build as like an update to Pensylvania Oiling Gas law to deal with the issues that came with fracking, because they had never really been contemplated when the original laws were written, but they let the oil and gas industry write the entire thing. I mean, I remember seeing lobbyist from the oil and gas industry in the Lieutenant governor's office Under the corporate administration. While this was happening, Like writing this thing in real time. I watched them. You know, you know going to my democratic colleagues, and and you know buying them off isn't the right word. I don't like that implication, but lobbying them very hard, And you know the bill passed the House by one vote, and there was a lot of chicanery there. I'm not going to name any names, But it was bad, and because what this bill did, it was amazin. In retrospect. it took the ability of municipalities. It took away their ability to do any sort of zoning for any reason related to oil and gas. so the state law basically preempted all states owning, So they are all local zoning laws, which is unheard of. There is no industry anywhere that has ever had that kind of exemption and that kind of free ride. Because what happened was They were the oil and gas companies were trying to. They thought they could kind of come in on the local level and just kind of like sucker all these local governments into giving them what they wanted And then it didn't take long before some of them because most of them were once I represented. They were in my area in Washington county and in Alegania county, and they were like, Yeah, thanks, but no thanks. So they got smart and we organized. You know, we formed a Marcellus municipal coop where we had these folks working together, so the dividing conquer tactics couldn't happen any more. so when that happened they were like Oh, now we're just going to go to the state, Get him to do a top down law And then there's nothing you can do and the thing passed and it was unbelievable. What what this law did? I mean. It was just if it had not been overturned by the courts, it was you would not recognize massive parts of this state. It would have been more of an industrial wasteland than than some parts even are right now. Unbelievable And it was you know at the time the perception was all of these guys are, These companies have so much money and so much influential Never get to overturn. But it was such a bad law that it got overturned and I actually wrote a micus brief. Uh, It was part of that process. Along with my municipalities, we got the Commonwealth Court to stay it overrule it, because it was that ridiculous, and the Common Wealth Court was a very conservative court at the Tim, Very Republican court, And then the State Supreme Court affirmed that and then the law was overruled, and I look back on that as you know, that whole process is probably the greatest victory I ever had, and you know a lot of times I'll tell people you know they said. Well, what? what have you accomplished? Anywhere? in any you know any sort of Political context. I always say, Sometimes the biggest accomplishments aren't your wins or defined by what you stopped. and by stopping that we were able to save the state from a lot of problems that they'll luckily never even know about, You know, And did it come out a political cost. absolutely, as you know again, If you know me, you know how that went, And but when that all happened, and when the oil and gas industry got really aggressive politically and started going after not just me, but anybody that questioned them right, I can tell you, the Democrats turned their backs, you know, my own state senator, Tim Saliva, you know, worked Directly with them, like in late night meetings to undermine what we were trying to do. The Democratic caucus Now, in fairness, it's a different leadership team, but they found a primary challenger and funded them, which is like a massive. No. No, if you know how any of these organizations work, because that's what the link as industry want them to do Even today, Look at. and this is a topic for a broader discussion, but I would argue that the oil and gas industry has really co opted organized labor in a lot of ways to where you can't get Democrats into competitive races. In south western Pensylvania, they've walked away from it because organized labor is back in the Republicans, and the Republicans are as Alway Singing the praises of the willing gas industry. So you see what's happening in East Palestine, Ohio, and you think? Oh God, I hope that never happens here. Well guess what it has. It has absolutely happened here. You may not know about it, but it happened. I remember a situation where on Christmas Eve we had to evacuate an entire town in Washington county, because the Mark West processing facility, which is like something out of some sort of distopian nightmare movie, It's this massive, sprawling like industrial complex, which is like right next to a day care center and a vote, And if you look at it through like a flare camera, you could just see it spewing every horrible like you know. the every everything you can't see with your naked eye is coming off of this thing. And there were numerous instances where there were explosions. There were fire balls. There were smoke pouring into this sky, And you know they have these things locked up like Fort Knox. You can't even get to them. He evacuated a town on Christmas Eve, and when you asked them what went wrong And they were like, Oh, it was just the safety system doing what it was supposed to do. How the hell does that make you feel any better? That's like saying Okay, My house burned down. The smoke alarm went off because that's what supposed to do? Yeah, but that's not why the house caught on fire. I had people coming to me that were working in there telling me that they. there were trucks inside that melted like not burned, not got messed up a bit melted. Think that's something that may be a bit of a health hazard. I mean, I mean, I don't have time to go into all the details again. That's a. That's a discussion for another day. But the point is this stuff happened. Google Cornerstone care just outside of Burgers, Town of Washington County, Public Health clinic in twenty twelve, closed down for months because there were fumes coming in and causing everybody to be sick. There were people throwing up over the railings. We were able to figure out it was because of these open air empowlments, When they were dumping all of this toxic water they were up high. Be clinic was in a valley. When the wind there would be an accumulation on these these empowlment ponds of heavier than air chemicals voces. they would sit in this this big toxic cloud, and when the wind would blow, which by the way just happened to be when everybody would be getting sick, as how we were able to piece it together when the wind would blow. Because they were heavier than air. they would settle into the valley, And that's when people got sick, And when we went and looked at it, The D P did bullshit testing, found exactly what they wanted what everybody wanted them to find. Instead of doing a long term, you know, a longer term test to see like what was really going on, they did this like super short window and they tried to say that it. The fumes that were there came from somebody mowing the grass on a riding mower like half a mile away, Tim Sliva, Remember, in a meeting with the D. P, tried to say that it came from an old industrial facility that had been like three miles down the road that had been closed for like wenty years. I mean, they were doing summersaults, and if you you know, Tim, saliva, picture him trying to do a summersault. That's not a pretty picture. They were doing summersaults trying to come up with reasons why it couldn't be the drilling facility. The oil and gas infrastructure couldn't even ask you. ask D. P. and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, they faked reports. They went around, everybody to the press. It was so corrupt it was unbelievably corrupt. People lost their jobs, people lost their liveliest people, lost access to the town health clinic. The Matpisarella from Range resources went on Kate K, with our friend Andy. She in and tried to convince them everything was coming from some paint cans around back. I was there. I couldn't believe it. That's the kind of crap that went down. And when that Mark West plant in, Did Houston really Charters Township, Washington County, look it up. Google in. When that thing goes up, and trust me it will, it will explode. One day. When that happens, it will make East Palestine look like a trip to Disney World, and again, I'm in no way down playing the significance of what happened there, But I know people that worked in fields in in Washington County where they had to replace toxic soil six feet deep and they still weren't getting it. They still weren't. It was still picking off the charts. These guys were there. They were in it. telling me about it. It happened, water pollution, dead live stock, I mean, even afterwards after I left office, the child cancer cluster, that was, and this was the Wolf Administration. Their Department of Health was very complicit in covering that up absolutely again. All the details are there. I don't have time to go into all of it, but it happened So these are real things now. Are there lawmakers that are genuinely concerned about environmental issues? Yeah, I actually took, made it a point to go through and look at some cost. sponsorship memos and things like that. You know there's some. There's some good stuff there, Malcom. Can you add good stuff, Chris Rob in the house, excellent stuff. But there's no political will to get it done. There's just isn't, because, at the end of the day it's easier to just play along right. That's what happens like there's no, there's no environ. There's the pressure from an environmentalist is nothing compared to the pressure from industry. Nothing it's laughed at. in the halls of the capital, it's laughed at. There's virtues Doling, there's you know. The some people say all the right things you know. and here's the other thing you know. A Lot of the people that will talk about this are from parts of the state where it's not real right where it's not happening. It's easy to do that from there because it's you know that's just good politics right. but like there's a reason Democrats don't even run candidates in those areas anymore because they have to confront the reality of what's going on. There are districts in this state where an environmental candidate could run and talk about those issues and at least force the incumbents there, the republican incumbents to talk about some of it to acknowledge it. But we don't do that. We pass. We punt every time because it's easier. We'll just go spend another two million dollars on a district in the south eastern part of the state Unless just pretend that anything west of Harris Burgh that isn't Pittsburg or Ere doesn't exist. Look at the map. You can blame Trump. You can blame whatever you want. Sometimes there are things happen for multiple reasons. There is a child cancer cluster in Pensylvania, There's one of the. That's one of the reasons I'm recording this from Cumberland County in central Pennsylvania and not Washington County, where I live for my entire life, because I have two kids and they need to get the hell out of there for their own safety, Because I knew not only did I know what was going on, but I knew that nobody was going to give a damn about it. Nobody and nobody has. I've got receipts. Not that anybody cares, But it's real. It's out there and there are people that know it. But the system is so rigged and the people that are advocating and living it are so tired That there's just the thought of what's the damn point. I mean, that's a horrible place to be, but that's where we're at. That's where we're at. But I know I've been hard on Democrats here, but let's not forget the Republicans are even worse right, and the one of the things I saw at tweet that just absolutely sent me into orbit from Congressman Scott Perry, Former state House member, Former, a former chairman of the Environmental Resources Committee. All right, Just in light of everything I just said, Keep that in mind. as I read this week. He's responding to Scott Harry's responding to a tweet from President Baden about his trip to, and he said, Wouldn't be Parry says, Wouldn't be great if our southern border would capture a part of his heart To. maybe the people of East Palestine Would be nice if he back to those if he'd be back to those two. Oh, that's right. he's never been Like. What? Like? I'll take a lot of crap from a lot of people. But Scott Perry, trying to act like he gives a damn about the people in East Palestine, and all of the things that have led up to it in the lack of regulation and the lack of enforcement in the fact that nothing is going to change and there's going to be another one or more than one Like Scott Perry, You can just fuck right off all the way off like there. That is like that's not even just bold hypocrisy, That's just being a brazen jag off And hope that no one knows any better. So you know all of this, all of this virtue signaling, and in performance art, That's what is the performance art by Republicans, who are all of a sudden are going to be pretend to be environmentalists Like remember, let's remember who they really are. Let's remember who's writing their quote and quote checks. Let's remember they're never going to speak up to those guys, Especially at the state level. Never challenge them. And I'm not so sure the Democrats will either. So you worry about what's going to happen. You look at these Palestine. You wonder what's going to happen in Pensylvania, It's already happened And it's going to happen again and again. And is anything going to change? I don't see how We used to say that the only way this would change is if there were if there were kids in coffins, and then we found an actual goddamn child cancer cluster and still nothing changed, So I don't know what's left. I have no idea, So yeah, there's something to feel good about No matter how bad we think it is, I'm telling you it's It's actually kind of worse, And hopefully with this governor and their Department of Environmental Protection will start to see an about face because I really do have faith in Josh. Um, but it's a big machine and there's a lot of moving parts, and the corruption and the compliance and the complicity runs so deep that I don't know if one person can root it out. It's institutional corruption at this point is baked in. So yeah, That's where we're at and it's not great. It is, as I'd like to say, suboptimal, and it's getting more suboptimal by the day. And what's going to come out in years to come? Our kids are going to look back and look at us and say, How the hell did you not know about this And why did you not do anything? I know what my answer would be. I did what I could. I don't think a lot of other folks in office can say that. I think that's a good place to end it again. This has been the Keystone Recording podcast. Thank you for taking the time to listen. We are a political action committee. If you want to help support keeping the infrastructure of the organization going, please go to Key Stone Recording Dot Com and make a donation. You can. also, you can find that through any of our social channels as well. also, please check us out and subscribe to our social channels. Also check out True Blue Gear Dot Com website that offers democratic and progressive t shirts apparel. That kind of thing. They are a partner of ours and we want to support them and until next time, if you have any ideas for additional episodes or topics or something that would be a good guest, We're always looking for new new and Thin people. Uh, please shoot me email info at Keystone, reckon, dot com, or you can again hit us up on Universe socials. Thank you for taking the time to tune in. This is Jessie White. Have a great day.