DEP fines pipeline company $1.5 million for damaging Butler County wetlands

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

July 18, 2016 | 6:37 PM

Natural gas gathering lines in Bradford County. A company building a gathering line system in Butler County has agreed to pay $1.5 million fine for allowing sediment to run into a stream and wetlands.

A company constructing a pipeline system in Butler County to connect gas wells to a processing plant will pay $1.5 million for causing a landslide into a stream, and discharging sediment in to a wetland. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection says Stonehenge Appalachia has entered a consent order with the agency and agreed to pay the fine.
“This type of man-made ecological impact is both egregious and avoidable, and never should have occurred,” said Acting DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell. “By this action, Stonehenge accepts both environmental and financial responsibility for their actions.”
Stonehenge incurred the violations while building an 18-mile gathering line for the State College based independent producer Rex Energy, which plans to transport the gas to MarkWest Energy’s Bluestone Processing facility in Evans City.
DEP says between November 2015 and March 2016, Stonehenge allowed sediment to enter a stream and fill two wetlands. The company also discharged “significant drilling fluids, including bentonite clay” into waterways.