PA Actively Killing Jobs and Budget Relief

In a perfect world, the Obama administration would have looked to the massive deposits of energy-producing raw materials we have under our feet to stimulate the economy. Instead he bowed to the altar of environmentalism more deeply than he bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia. He could have offered a plan that included tax credits to businesses who could extract oil, coal, natural gas that were new, clean and sustainable. Energy companies would have jumped at it and believe me; as someone in the business, the means to do so are what Obama would have called "shovel ready". We have environmentally friendly means that have been developed and can be implemented at will.

The jobs that would have been created would have been in the hardest hit states who are desperately seeking jobs like West Virginia, New York and rural Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania and parts of New York are in the midst of a modern day gold rush but the substance isn't a solid, it's natural gas and the amounts in the Marcellus Shale deposits would give us a serious leg up on the world when it comes to self-sufficiency in that particular raw material.

Instead The One poured our money into pork projects, handouts and funds for "community organizing" that do anything but.

Today, the state of Pennsylvania drove another stake through the heart of budget balancing and reducing the unemployment rolls by withdrawing a permit for water treatment for one of the largest gas-extracting operations in the country:

Months ago, with little public awareness, the Delaware County wastewater treatment plant got a state permit to accept wastewater from natural gas-drilling operations hundreds of miles away.

The plan was to take the polluted water from the burgeoning - and contentious - industry in the Marcellus Shale region, transport it by truck or train to the Chester facility, treat it there, and then discharge it into the Delaware River.

Until yesterday, that is, when the permit was abruptly rescinded.

Note the negative use of "polluted". Most water is polluted before it's treated, hell, toilet water is "polluted" as is water from your clothes and dish washer when it's discharged.

More:

Yet getting the gas out of the ground requires millions of gallons of water to fracture - or "frack" - the shale. Companies add various chemicals to increase the water's effectiveness, and the fracking process deep underground can contaminate the wastewater with toxics and natural radioactivity.

Again, note the use of the word "toxics"; it's misleading. Everything is toxic according to what we used to call science (before Climategate). Paracelsus; a Swiss chemist came up with this hypothesis on toxicity and it's not been disproven to this day:

“Alle Ding sind Gift und nichts ohn Gift; alein die Dosis macht das ein Ding kein Gift ist” [all things are poison and notwithout poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison”]. With the exception of E = mc2, perhaps no other single statement has wielded such force in establishing the popular notoriety and the professional stature of an individual in the history of science as the words just quoted.

What he meant was simply that everything is toxic. If you're thirsty and drink a glass of water, you're no longer thirsty. If you drink fifteen, you will have an adverse or toxic reaction. Example here.

I digress but my point is the MSM always uses loaded words when discussing environmental issues.

Let's continue with the PA story:

Companies need ways to deal with the wastewater. Options include treating it on-site, reusing it, injecting it into deep wells and transporting it to wastewater treatment plants.

But treatment has been problematic because the water has impurities known as "total dissolved solids" and other contaminants, such as chlorides (salt) and sulfates.

Dissolved solids, chlorides and sulfates are all easily treatable and can be accomplished by any municipal treatment plant in Iraq. Again, misleading.

Most plants cannot remove the solids (a lie--ed). On April 16, the DEP announced discharge standards limiting the solids in the wastewater effluent.

But just five weeks earlier, on March 9, the state approved a permit for the Delaware County Regional Water Quality Control Authority, which was already discharging levels of solids that were higher than the new standards, to accept this solids-laden water in Chester.

The approval meant that the plant would be "grandfathered," not having to comply with the new standards until its permit was changed for other reasons, DEP officials acknowledged.

So the plant currently can discharge the solids but now because it's coming from a shale site, they suddenly can't?

This is a plan by Pennsylvania to limit the extraction of a valuable commodity that would lift the standards of living in a depressed area but in Obamanation we must not piss off Gaia. Ed Rendell is falling right in line like a good little puppy dog while his state is withering and dying.

Meanwhile, China, Russia and other nations are getting fat, dumb and happy while devastating their environment.