This evening, the Allegheny County Department of Health will hold a public hearing on a proposal to build a massive new fracked gas power plant in Elizabeth. 

Ahead of the hearing, Food & Water Watch Pennsylvania State Director Megan McDonough issued the following statement: 

“The Allegheny County Health Department has failed county residents time and time again by handing out permits to major polluters while failing to enforce their own policies intended to protect the health and well-being of residents. Recent comments by the department suggest that an approval of the Invenergy installation permit may be forthcoming. The fact that the Health Department would approve a new major source polluter in the Mon Yough region is appalling. 

“This approval would violate their rules and regulations for permit issuance, and add to a long list of regulatory failures by this agency. Enough is enough. We are calling on the Attorney General Josh Shapiro to investigate the Allegheny County Health Department for regulatory failures that have exposed county residents to environmental crimes.

“When Shapiro’s office released its grand jury report on the harms associated with fracking, it shined a light on the regulatory failures of the government agencies that are supposed to protect the people of Pennsylvania from environmental harm. So long as these agencies approve new sources of air and water pollution, those harms will continue. The Attorney General must step in and do what the regulatory agencies refuse to do.”