The battle against the Dragonpipe (Mariner East 2) will be a long one, I have no doubt. We must be ready for that. But we also need to celebrate our wins, and we just had two big ones, involving two key regulatory agencies.

Victory #1: The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) has agreed to hear West Goshen Township’s petition, requesting that Sunoco/ETP honor the agreement they signed in 2015 concerning the location of a valve facility. Sunoco is required to stop work in West Goshen until the PUC rules on the petition, which could take as much as 5 weeks. You can read about the petition here, and more about the PUC’s response here.

Victory #2: The Environmental Hearing Board, which is part of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), has responded to a petition from the Clean Air Council and two other organizations by requiring a two-week stoppage to all of Sunoco’s horizontal drilling activities. In their petition, the three organizations compiled hundreds of pages of evidence of environmental problems from horizontal drilling. You can read more about that petition here .

So now is a great time to take a long breath and do a little modest celebrating. You might want to attend tonight’s family game night, sponsored by Delco PA Indivisible, at the Media VFW hall.

But the fight is far from over, so let’s make sure we don’t get complacent.

In addition to the interventions with the PUC and DEP, there are still court cases pending, and opportunities for political pressure. You can keep abreast of the developments by subscribing to this blog.

In the meantime, enjoy a day or two of relative calm!