“Even if we had won every single count at trial, Energy Transfer would’ve walked away paying just pocket change for their crimes,” Shapiro said Friday. His office said the statutory maximum for the crimes for which Energy Transfer was charged amounted to only $1.45 million, making a plea deal more beneficial to victims than taking the case to trial. Shapiro, a Democrat running for governor, has long complained that Pennsylvania’s criminal environmental laws are too weak. Energy Transfer reported this week that its net income jumped 90% in the second quarter, to $1.33 billion, as the company’s pipelines carried record volumes of natural gas liquids. The money is a drop in the bucket to a pipeline company with surging profits.
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The company must abide by the independent experts’ recommendations on how to restore the fouled water, prosecutors said.Īnother part of the plea deal requires Energy Transfer to pay $10 million to address contamination of groundwater and streams. Previously, Energy Transfer itself had been testing water. But prosecutors said the plea deal goes a step further by requiring the company to submit to water testing by geologists picked by the attorney general’s office. “How do you take contaminated aquifers and un-contaminate them? How many years does that take?” Katz said.Įnergy Transfer’s state permits already require it to fix the damage its pipeline construction caused. She said she still does not drink her well water. She said Sunoco strong-armed residents into signing agreements to allow the pipeline, tore up the neighborhood during construction, and fouled the aquifer. “I’m hopeful, but knowing Sunoco’s track record, I am skeptical,” said Karen Katz, of Edgmont Township in Delaware County. Residents were wary of the plea deal, given their fraught history with Sunoco Pipeline LP, the Energy Transfer subsidiary that operates Mariner East. More than 800 residents along the pipelines’ route have been notified of the testing, and residents have until Aug. Under the plea agreement, residents who live near the pipeline and have private water can request independent testing. The company fouled the drinking water of at least 150 families, prosecutors have said. The attorney general stepped in last October, charging Energy Transfer with releasing industrial waste at 22 sites in 11 counties and failing to report spills to regulators. The owner has racked up tens of millions of dollars in civil penalties, and state regulators repeatedly halted construction over contamination. Mariner East has been one of the most penalized projects in state history. The company’s Mariner East 1, Mariner East 2 and Mariner East 2X pipelines carry propane, ethane and butane from the Marcellus and Utica shale gas fields to a refinery processing center and export terminal in Marcus Hook, a suburb of Philadelphia. Shapiro is running for office, it remains disappointing that he would mischaracterize the facts of this voluntary agreement to his political advantage rather than acknowledge the good faith efforts of Energy Transfer to resolve this dispute,” the spokeswoman, Laura Atchley, said in an email. An Energy Transfer spokeswoman called the $10 million fund “not a fine or penalty of any kind but the product of a voluntary collaboration” with the state.
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