West Whiteland Residents for Pipeline Safety

02/28/2026

Hard to believe this has been a decade already, as history appears to be repeating itself yet again. A reminder how former Governor Wolf and former Secretary Patrick McDonnell opened the door to the harms from Mariner East construction…..

It’s now been 10 years ago that former PA Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Quigley was forced out of that position after refusing to issue permits to a corporation for a project that had the potential to bring great harm to the environment and communities.

With Quigley out, Governor Wolf appointed a new DEP Secretary, Patrick McDonnell. Shortly thereafter, the permits were issued for the Mariner East pipeline project despite hundreds of deficiencies. And under McDonnell’s leadership, the DEP allowed violations to occur again and again, documented concerns from impacted community members and environmental organizations were ignored, and when permits expired they were promptly re-issued. These violations eventually led to 48 criminal charges against Sunoco/Energy Transfer.

➡️ Email exchanges between the governor‘s office and former Secretary Patrick McDonnell which led to an ethics investigation pull back the curtain on the issuance of the permits https://www.witf.org/2018/01/26/mariner-east-2-texts-raise-questions-about-wolf-administration-role-in-permitting-process/

📍Mariner East is a case study on the failure of our government to do its job to protect Pennsylvanians. Something to remember as the DEP under Secretary Jessica Shirley’s leadership promises “the highest level of service and urgency” to Amazon and other tech and energy corporations looking to profit off our land, water and energy resources for a massive buildout of data centers.

02/01/2026

DCED was behind the push for Mariner East. Now they’re pushing hyper scale data centers.

Contact your State Rep now and urge them to vote no on HB2151, especially if it’s Rep Chris Pielli - he is a member of the committee that will be voting on Wednesday, along with another ChesCo Rep Paul Friel

On Friday afternoon, it was revealed that a data center bill will be rushed to a committee vote on Wednesday, February 4 at 10am in Harrisburg.

When the cosponsor memorandum was released in October, the bill sounded like it might be good: “Currently, there are no consistent statewide standards that require data centers to mitigate these impacts. This gap leaves communities vulnerable to quality-of-life concerns when facilities are sited nearby”. (The memo gave no indication though of how that would be done).

But the devil is in the detail details and those details became known just over a week ago when the bill language was released .

HB2151 will do none of the good things the cosponsor memorandum claims.

Instead, it distorts the purpose of the Municipal Planning Code, and even more concerning, it hands the authority of writing this statewide data center ordinance guidance to the Department of Community and Economic Development ( DCED).

DCED‘s role is not to ensure zoning integrity nor to protect residents. DCED’s role is to advance and facilitate industry. And for months, if not years, they have been working hand-in-hand with Amazon and others, making backroom deals to fast track and advance data center development in PA. (See image and note below)

✅ contact your State Rep now and urge them to put protecting communities and the environment ahead of corporate interest and vote NO on HB 2151. There is no amendment that can turn this into a good bill - putting DCED in charge of writing a data center ordinance makes it bad to its core.

Instead, we need a statewide moratorium on data centers to give time for municipalities to pass their own ordinances for this new use and for guard rails on this industry to be put in place at the state level.

📍Find your state rep here: https://www.palegis.us/find-my-legislator

📍Find the bill here: https://www.palegis.us/legislation/bills/2025/hb2151

⭐️ Share this post to helps spread the word and get others to take action

———————————————————————

🏭 Image below is just one of the emails obtained through a recent RTK request between Rigel Sigel (who leads DCED), members of his staff and Amazon Web Services executives.

💧 SRBC in the email refers to the Susquehanna River basin commission. They oversee and issue permits for withdrawals from this critical water resource for Pennsylvanians - one that is already subject to drought.

12/29/2025

The Delaware County Chamber of Commerce just honored Energy Transfer, the Texas-based corporation that received 48 charges for environmental crimes by AG Josh Shapiro during Mariner East construction. And it was the Delaware County DA who made the referral to Shapiro.

And in January of this year it was discovered that a pipeline owned by Energy Transfer had been leaking jet fuel in Bucks County from a repair sleeve, undetected by ET for over a year, contaminating private water wells and leaving a neighborhood in Upper Makefield now facing an estimated 10 years of water and soil remediation. One home’s well had 12 feet of jet fuel atop its water.

44 locations with the same repair sleeves and of the same age as the one in UpperMakefield were identified along the pipeline route across Delaware County, Chester County, Montgomery County, Bucks County and up to to Newwark NJ.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17yFtkdbBF/?mibextid=wwXIfr

11/29/2025

While the community in Limerick gets a semi annual nuclear plant siren test on December 1, what do communities along Mariner East get?

A newly-released, $720,000 taxpayer-funded emergency plan that gives a dangerous, false impression that putting a project like this in densely populated communuties is okay. Check out this gem for example where destruction is limited to only 100 feet. We have no idea where these numbers for Mariner East came from, because these aren’t in the PHMSA publication cited.

Who at Chester County Government signed of on this dangerously erroneous plan?

https://www.chesco.org/DocumentCenter/View/81647/Chester-County-Pipeline-Incident-Annex-Final-112025?bidId=

11/13/2025

Say hello to West Whiteland’s newest Township Supervisor!

Tonight Libby Madarasz was appointed and sworn in, filling a recent vacancy. Most people here know or recognize Libby for her tireless work for years, defending and protecting our community from the Mariner East pipeline project. Whether it’s spending countless hours in the wetland, knocking doors to collect petition signatures, showing up and speaking up at almost every township meeting, documenting and reporting violations - Libby was always there. And she continues to be on so many issues, impacting West Whiteland, including in recent years, serving on the Zoning Hearing Board.

Thank you Libby for all you do in service to the community and for stepping up into this new role!

11/12/2025

File this under Are you Kidding Me?????

Photo shows the four scenarios used in developing Chester County Government's newly released Mariner East emergency plan.

📌Scenario #1 is a stretch. It's a butane leak which is one of the products Mariner East might carry. But the air temperature of high 20 degrees F was a strange one to use. Why did they? Maybe because butane is a liquid below 31F. If they used our more typical air temperature it would have been a highly explosive gas. AND if they had used ethane, which is what Mariner East mostly carries, it would have been a highly explosive gas if released at any temperature above -127F.

🤦‍♀️And get this: The "real-life" scenario they used to model #1 was a length of 12" pipeline that broke lose from its crib during pipeline construction and crashed into a house. It wasn't even an operating pipeline. Seriously.....

📌Scenario 2,3, and 4 are all for refined petroleum or natural gas. Mariner East carries ethane, propane, butane

💰💰💰The County paid a firm with no NGL pipeline experience $720,000 to develop this plan.

https://www.chesco.org/DocumentCenter/View/81647/Chester-County-Pipeline-Incident-Annex-Final-112025?bidId=

County Commissioner Marian Moskowitz County Commissioner Josh Maxwell Eric Roe for Chester County Commissioner Chester County Department of Emergency ServicesFile

11/12/2025

From Chester County Government's newly released emergency plan for Mariner East

❌In the event of a leak, Chester County Department of Emergency Services would instruct community members to drive away. You read that right.

The County paid a firm with no NGL pipeline experience $720,000 to develop this plan.

https://www.chesco.org/DocumentCenter/View/81647/Chester-County-Pipeline-Incident-Annex-Final-112025?bidId=

County Commissioner Marian Moskowitz County Commissioner Josh Maxwell Eric Roe for Chester County Commissioner

11/12/2025

And there it is. Released with very little fanfare, years overdue and remarkably inadequate, an emergency plan for the Mariner East pipeline project. Thank you to Chester County Ramblings for bringing it to public attention

💰💰Taxpayers paid over $700,000 to a consulting firm with zero experience in developing emergency plans for these dangerous natural gas liquids pipelines for this plan.

💥A bit of background: Way back in 2021 when residents were calling on our county commissioners to take action and shutdown Mariner East operation due to a series of sinkholes forming along this pipeline construction near the Chester County library, County Commissioner Marian Moskowitz, County Commissioner Josh Maxwell and former County Commissioner Michelle Kichline announced they would be doing this instead.

🤫 The plan was quietly posted, with no reference to Mariner East, on the Chester County Government website in the Chester County Department of Emergency Services section this week while all attention is on the investigation into the incorrect poll books.

We haven’t had a chance to dive into it yet. But we encourage everyone too, and give your comments. Once we’ve had a moment to read it through, we will share ours in another post. But based on the poorly advertised public presentation, we went to several weeks ago, our expectations could not be lower.

https://www.chesco.org/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=1684

10/27/2025

Heads up!

PIPELINE EMERGENCY EXERCISE - Chester County Department of Emergency Services will be hosting a full-scale pipeline emergency exercise in East Goshen and Westtown Townships TODAY from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM. This is only an exercise and there will be no danger to the public.

ABOUT THIS EXERCISE:

The Chester County Department of Emergency Services, East Goshen Township and Westtown Township, alongside first responders agencies will participate in a Full-Scale Exercise to practice response to a pipeline emergency.

This is only an exercise and there will be no danger to the public.

WHAT TO EXPECT:

You may see first responders and emergency vehicles in the area during the exercise. There will be no road closures related to this exercise.

WHERE:

The exercise activities will be conducted in the following areas:

East Goshen Township Building
1580 Paoli Pike, West Chester, PA 19380
St. Simon and Jude Church/School parking lot
8 Cavanaugh Court
West Chester, PA 19382
Windermere Apartments
Near the intersection of N. Chester Road (PA Route 352) and Manley Road.

10/22/2025

Working in communities across eastern and central Pennsylvania that are being targeted for this buildout, I can tell you that contrary to the governor’s claim, Pennsylvania is definitely NOT “all-in to lead on AI”

Governor Shapiro and other leaders should spend more time in these communities. They don’t have to travel far to find them. They are popping up everywhere across the Commonwealth. It’s like whack-a-mole right now.

Just last night, I traveled up to Carbon County near Jim Thorpe and back to attend a special meeting in the garage of a township building because the regular room was not big enough for the turnout. A very dedicated and community-focused board of supervisors is working hard to get a strong, protective data center ordinance in place. This incredibly beautiful area, made even more stunning on the drive at dusk thanks to the autumn colors, has been targeted.

The room was filled with angry, cocerned and informed residents.

Three hours away in York County, community members similarly packed a Township meeting last might to voice their opposition to an attempt to re-zone 450 acres including a golf course for this industrial use. The night before, I created a petition for them calling for a NO vote and in less than 24 hours they collected over 1200 local signatures.

Across Pennsylvania in communities like this, any night of the week, you will find people leaving their homes and going out to their local meetings to fight this buildout. They’re fighting for all of us.

One of the biggest reasons PA is not ready for these data centers is the staggering, unprecedented amount of energy they would require. So there would be a massive build out of power plants to go along with this, primarily fracked gas, and all the additional harms that would bring to climate, the environment and communities - not to mention increased energy costs for all Pennsylvanians.

So what is Office of the Governor of Pennsylvania and our state legislature doing about it? Not anywhere close to enough, or the exact opposite of what they should be doing. Two bills have been introduced to silence community voices and unconstitutionally and undemocratically take away local control, putting it in the hands of unelected individuals in Harrisburg who will fast track approvals.

What can you do?✅ Contact your state legislators and urge them to vote NO on HB502 and SB939. This message action makes it easy: https://act.foodandwaterwatch.org/page/88762/action/1?locale=en-US

(Photo and headline from yesterday‘s Pittsburgh post gazette )

09/23/2025

It was like Back to the Future tonight in Exton - we climbed out of Doc’s DeLorean into 2017.

Despite over $700,000 and the county’s best efforts, we still got the same unacceptable answers to the big questions about when there is a leak on Mariner East. We can’t fault our Emergency Services - They were handed an impossible task.

Bottom line, this kind of pipeline has no business going through a densely populated area. Let’s not pretend it does.

Here’s the livefeed - https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1YuSTDJ1kJ/?mibextid=wwXIfr