The opponents of the Mariner East 2 pipeline have racked up a couple of impressive victories the past few weeks.
First, the state Department of Environmental Protection shut down all work on the massive Sunoco Pipeline LP project across the state, citing "egregious" problems that have plagued work on the pipeline for months. They also rapped Sunoco for doing some controversial Horizontal Directional Drilling in areas out near Harrisburg where they were not permitted to do so.
The DEP wants Sunoco to come in with a plan indicating they can fix the problems and adhere to all state regulations. Sunoco says it intends to do just that.
Then this week Delaware County Council told a group that had come before it asking for the county to perform its own risk assessment on the plan that it would do so. A final vote on the plan should come this week.
And so the debate rages on, with Sunoco crowing about the economic benefits, and citizens saying those should not outweigh residents' concerns about safety.
At this point, doing the risk assessment study and thoroughly airing the findings might be the only way to settle this dispute.
You can read it on our editorial page.
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