Morning Links: Fracking Bans, More Fracking Bans, An Industry-Funded School Curriculum, And Bryce Harper

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.

July 5, 2011 | 9:37 AM

Good morning, and happy belated Fourth of July –

Scott Detrow / StateImpactPA/WITF-FM

Bryce Harper drives the first AA pitch he sees up the middle for a hit.FM

First, the important news: 18-year-old phenom Bryce Harper went 2-3 with a walk in his debut for the AA Harrisburg Senators, where the Nationals’ top draft pick is expected to stay for the rest of the baseball season.
And now, on to today’s environmental headlines:
Ohio will make more than $1 million, disposing fracking fluid from drillers in Pennsylvania and other states.
DEP has approved a permit for a new $150 million natural gas-fueled power plant in Washington County.
Chesapeake Energy, Chief Oil and Gas and other drilling companies have donated thousands of dollars to a program aimed at creating a “Jobs in Energy” curriculum for Western Pennsylvania middle schoolers.
There’s an effort underway to ban fracking in State College Centre County. Geology has pretty much taken care of that already, since the Marcellus Shale doesn’t run through State College. But advocates of the ban point out the borough does sit on top of the Utica Shale, and could therefore see drilling in the future.
Meantime, Governor Chris Christie hasn’t decided whether or not to sign a fracking ban passed by New Jersey lawmakers. (Like State College, the Garden State has Utica Shale, but no Marcellus.)