PublicSource (https://www.publicsource.org/category/environment/)
If politicians like Mayor Bill Peduto don't have an answer for what kind of climate-friendly jobs they can bring to the region in place of petrochemical ones, the Pittsburgh region may continue to see additional fossil fuel jobs and see its climate emissions increase.
Jim Kelly, the deputy director of environmental health for Allegheny County, made a surprise announcement at the most recent board of health meeting last month.
He said his department was starting to develop more stringent emission regulations that would improve an air quality issue that has long gone unaddressed.
Angelo Norelli’s house in Uptown was always cold. Too cold for his seven grandchildren to visit in the winter. Even with an extra heater running in his bedroom, he still had to use several blankets to sleep. And he didn’t know where the heat was escaping. Norelli, 67, didn’t have a lot of extra money or energy to figure it out either.
Pittsburgh now brands itself as a modern city built on research, robots, universities, advanced manufacturing, green energy — and the high-skilled jobs that come with it all.
But there’s another narrative developing: The plethora of shale gas and natural gas liquids in Southwestern Pennsylvania provide a solid foundation to build a new gas and petrochemical hub in Pittsburgh’s backyard.
The best way to make environmental impact, according to one top equity advisor, is to stop talking about it. Be ruthless about earning money from energy efficiency, and the environmental benefits will follow; good intentions and wanting to appear sustainable are getting in the way of getting results, he said.
The relationship between people and their natural environment is debated within various religious scriptures, teachings and sanctuaries.
To shed light on the conversation from the religious angle, PublicSource interviewed faith leaders and staff of Pittsburgh-area places of worship across five denominations to learn if and how caring for the Earth belongs in the edifice of religion.
More than 100 people showed up to Sixth Presbyterian Church in Squirrel Hill to listen to and ask questions of Larry Schweiger, one of the region’s most prominent environmentalists. Schweiger has led both the National Wildlife Federation and more recently PennFuture, a Pennsylvania-based environmental advocacy group.
Both parties advocate for public health, but they have differing opinions on how the money in the Clean Air Fund should be spent.
Several large Pittsburgh institutions, including hospitals and universities, have begun implementing strategies to cut food waste. But, in some cases, such efforts have had unexpected consequences: taking food from the needy.
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Bob Weimar has been serving as the interim executive director of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority for almost a year. And he is forging ahead with plans to revamp the organization and tackle the city’s lead issue despite numerous water main breaks and other setbacks, he said in an interview with PublicSource on Wednesday. One of Weimar’s priorities is to change the chemical that PWSA uses to control lead corrosion in its service lines, a move he hopes will drop lead levels down to single digits citywide and buy the organization the time it needs to locate, remove and replace the lead lines. He said Wednesday that he is awaiting approval from the state Department of Environmental Protection [DEP] to make the chemical change, and hopes to add it to PWSA’s systems by the spring. Weimar is taking other changes — including those to PWSA’s governing structure — in stride.
