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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

PA Revives Its Office of Environmental Justice

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Wednesday, October 21, 2015   

PITTSBURGH - The state Office of Environmental Justice finally is getting a new director, and fracking for natural gas will be on the agenda.

The office reviews the environmental impact of projects set for poor and minority communities, but it's been without a director for three months. Now, the Department of Environmental Protection says gas-drilling permit applications once again will trigger extra notification and community involvement in areas with few of the resources needed to say no.

That's good news to Larry Schweiger, president of the environmental group PennFuture.

"So now, putting that on the trigger list gives us an opportunity to know what's going on in advance," he said, "and hopefully those who are involved in agency decisions can step up and challenge bad choices."

Close to 500 wells have been drilled in environmental-justice communities - areas where 20 percent or more live in poverty, or 30 percent are people of color.

Schweiger pointed to studies showing that fracking can affect unborn children in communities close to drilling sites, and added that that's just the tip of the iceberg.

"We have the evidence now that fracking is a threat to residents," he said, "and it needs to be regulated to prevent those kinds of harm."

Just how effective the office will be remains a question. Under state law, environmental-justice concerns cannot be used as grounds to deny a gas drilling permit.


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