What Pennsylvania's Attorney General Nominees Are Saying About Drilling

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

April 25, 2012 | 10:30 AM

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

Kathleen Kane defeated Patrick Murphy in the race for the Democratic state Attorney General nomination, winning by a 53-47 margin.
Kane wants to step up the Attorney General’s environmental crimes unit, and make the AG’s office more involved in regulating natural gas drilling. She described her environmental platform during an interview with Allentown’s WFMZ:

It is the mission of the Environmental Crimes Section to investigate and prosecute crimes against Pennsylvania’s environment. Never has this section of the Attorney General’s Office been more important to the citizens of Pennsylvania.
Since the discovery of natural gas in Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale formations, dozens of oil and gas companies have descended upon our commonwealth to extract their riches from the earth. Using a process called fracking, these companies pump unknown chemicals into the ground, which may poison our groundwater or harm our citizens. We need to make sure that the Attorney General’s Office has the resources necessary to protect Pennsylvanians and our environment from the dangers of fracking and ensure our environment is not destroyed by the natural gas “gold rush” going on throughout our Commonwealth today.

Kane will face Cumberland County District Attorney Dave Freed in the fall campaign. How would the Republican handle environmental issues? Freed told witf the Attorney General’s main goal is to “level the playing field.”
“I would certainly protect the rights of law-abiding property owners and also law-abiding businesses,” he said. “And if a business, an industry, a person gets on the wrong side of the statute of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, then they’re going to have to deal with us.”