HARRISBURG, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — The acting secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection on Tuesday had her turn in the hot seat in front of the Pennsylvania Senate appropriations committee as budget hearings continue.
The hearing was polite, overall, but Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, a Republican from western Pennsylvania, set the tone early, while complimenting acting Secretary Jessica Shirley on addressing what she described as DEP “culture issues” to speed up wait times on permits.
“I don't mean to burst your bubble—or any of your predecessors’—but you're not going to save the planet,” Pittman said. “Your job is to make sure the agency runs, it runs well, and it's responsive to the constituents.”
From Nov. 1, 2023, to last month, DEP says it reduced the permit backlog by 75%—including permits to clear land for construction, air quality permits for industrial sites, and permits to upgrade drinking water systems—and eliminated the backlog for oil and gas well permits. And in January, DEP introduced a new permit tracking tool to make the process more transparent.
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Shirley says when DEP funding was cut 10 to 15 years ago, training programs were the first to go, which resulted in inconsistencies across the department—but they are bringing that training back.
Republican Scott Martin of Lancaster, the Senate appropriations chair, grilled Shirley about Gov. Josh Shapiro’s cap-and-trade energy plans, blaming those plans for discouraging new energy generation in Pennsylvania. But Shirley says that has less to do with Shapiro administration policy and more to do with how PJM, the grid manager, brings new generating plants online.
“There is only one base load energy facility being proposed, and that's in West Virginia. So we're not seeing, you know, a flux of development in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia. It's not a Pennsylvania problem. I think it's an entirety-of-PJM problem.”
Martin pushed back on carbon reduction plans, observing that all humans emit carbon when we breathe—because it wouldn’t be a Pennsylvania Senate hearing without a robust debate on the effects of carbon emissions on global temperatures.
Philadelphia Republican Joe Picozzi asked about efforts to curb air pollution, namely ozone, in the Philadelphia region.
“Most of the emission reductions there, I think—we feel like we've squeezed as much out of it as we can,” Shirley said.
She points a finger at emissions from neighboring West Virginia, Ohio, and even Indiana, along with interstate traffic on I-95.