Judge denies appeal for temporary halt to Mariner East 2 construction

Jon Hurdle

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Jon is an experienced journalist who has covered a wide range of general and business-news stories for national and local media in the U.S. and his native U.K. As a former Reuters reporter, he spent several years covering the early stages of Pennsylvania’s natural gas fracking boom and was one of the first national reporters to write about the effects of gas development on rural communities. Jon trained as a general news reporter with a British newspaper chain and later worked for several business-news organizations including Bloomberg News and Market News International, covering topics including economics, bonds, currencies and monetary policy. Since 2011, he has been a freelance writer, contributing Philadelphia-area news to The New York Times; covering economics for Market News, and writing stories on the environment and other subjects for a number of local outlets including StateImpact. He has written two travel guidebooks to the European Alps; lived in Australia, Switzerland, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and visited many countries including Ethiopia, Peru, Taiwan, and New Zealand. Outside of work hours, Jon can be found running, birding, cooking, and, when weather permits, gardening in the back yard of a Philadelphia row home where he lives with his partner, Kate.

February 17, 2017 | 11:58 AM

A sign marks a water crossing on land in Huntingdon County where Sunoco wants to build the Mariner East 2 pipeline. Although Sunoco still has to acquire water crossing and earth moving permits, the company has already cleared the area of trees.

Susan Phillips / StateImpact Pennsylvania

A sign marks a water crossing on land in Huntingdon County where Sunoco wants to build the Mariner East 2 pipeline. Pennsylvania DEP granted Sunoco to start work on the line and that was upheld Friday morning by the Environmental Hearing Board. The company still needs Army Corps permits to start in some areas.

Update: This story has been updated to reflect a request for the judge to reconsider his decision.

A Pennsylvania judge on Friday denied a request to temporarily halt the start of construction of the controversial Mariner East 2 pipeline.

Judge Bernard Labuskes of the Environmental Hearing Board did not give a reason for denying the request from three environmental groups who sought to stop Sunoco Logistics from starting work on the cross-state line, pending a full hearing on the issue in early March.

The Clean Air Council and two other groups argued in a hearing on Thursday that early work on the line, including tree cutting and horizontal drilling, would risk water contamination and result in “irreparable harm.”

But a Sunoco attorney said the company needed to start work right away in some locations in order to complete tree felling in time to meet a deadline that’s designed to protect a threatened species of bat.

The judge said a full hearing on the environmental groups’ request for an order of “supersedeas’ – will be held on March 1-3.

Sunoco and the Department of Environmental Protection declined to comment on the judge’s ruling.

Sunoco would not say when and where construction would begin, but DEP says the company can immediately begin work along the line in Delaware, Chester and Huntingdon counties.

The Clean Air Council’s attorney, Alex Bomstein, filed a request Friday afternoon for the judge to reconsider his decision, citing new information that Sunoco had not previously disclosed to the Environmental Hearing Board. Bomstein says that includes more construction activity than Sunoco’s attorneys presented to the Board.

The $2.5 billion, 350-mile pipeline would carry natural gas liquids from the Marcellus Shale of southwestern Pennsylvania to an export terminal at Marcus Hook near Philadelphia.