Wolf, DEP must police Mariner East

January 29, 2020

In December 2017, Sunoco Pipeline reported that 25 gallons of drilling fluid had leaked into Raystown Lake during construction of its controversial Mariner East 2 pipeline. Flash forward to January 2020. Earlier this month, regulators announced that the spill was actually much, much larger — 8,320 times larger. In reality, the 2017 spill resulted in 208,000 gallons of leaked drilling fluid covering eight acres of the lakebed. As a result, the Department of Environmental Protection fined Energy Transfer LP and Sunoco nearly $2 million. The company must also spend $1.15 ...

Region important to Amtrak, too

January 23, 2020

By Dennis Newman A Mirror editorial published Jan 10 was titled “Amtrak important to region.” We completely agree. And the region is important to Amtrak, too. For Amtrak, Pennsylvania is truly the Keystone State, with more than 120 daily trains, and nearly 6.7 million people boarding or alighting a train in Pennsylvania in Amtrak’s fiscal year 2019. This is close to 10% of Amtrak’s nationwide ridership. Only two states have more Amtrak passengers. Ridership on the Amtrak-owned Philadelphia-Harrisburg Keystone Corridor, served by more than two dozen Amtrak trains per ...

Volunteer fire services on life support

January 19, 2020

When I joined the fire service in 1969, the last thing on any department’s agenda was recruitment and retention. In fact, a few years after I joined, my department closed its charter because we had so many members. Times were different then. The local economy was booming. You could graduate one day and have a job in the mines, steel mills or railroad the next day. Today, things are different. The most important item on every volunteer fire department’s list is recruiting and retention and for good reason. Over the past 40 years the volunteer fire service in Pennsylvania has ...

Program makes insulin affordable

January 17, 2020

April 19,1775 at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts was the “shot heard around the world,” which is the beginning of the American Revolution. This first bold statement by the American colonists was the initial phase of what most believe to be the greatest overthrow of tyranny. After many battles and engagements, the war was won, and freedom came to the United States. On Jan. 2, we were reading an article from one of the multiple emails we get, and it described Novo Nordisk starting a new program that offered patients insulin for $99 per month. This program ...

Editorial sells short role of free press

December 29, 2019

By Andrew Leheny I have serious concerns regarding the Mirror’s Dec. 22 editorial “Impeachment doesn’t deter Trump support.” Our Founding Fathers demonstrated clearly the importance of a free press to our nation. Their incorporation of a free press within the First Amendment of the Constitution signifies its value to our Founders. As I read the editorial, I reluctantly had to wonder if the editorial board perceived its duty to its readership as directly tied to our Founders’ expectations of a free press. The focus of the editorial is that despite the impeachment of ...

Trains chug with enduring appeal

December 23, 2019

There’s an excursion line operated by the Everett Railroad that makes regular runs out of Hollidaysburg. You ride in restored vintage passenger cars pulled by No.11, a coal-fired steam locomotive built in the 1920s. Chugging along on an old track through narrow ravines and deeply wooded hillsides, passing the backyards of houses built a century ago and remote rustic settlements, it’s pure time-travel. In the summer, with all the windows thrown open and the coal smoke wafting in, the sense of a trip back to the past is unmistakable. Then there are those experiencing the ...