Trump has made fracking an election issue. Has he misjudged Pennsylvania?
The president's energy stance may not play well in a swing state threatened by pipeline projects and supportive of climate action
In early August, Ginny Kerslake's lush green yard in a middle-class Pennsylvania suburb turned into a muddy river, thanks to another spill at the pipeline drilling site opposite her house. A couple of days later, 10,000 gallons of drilling mud, or bentonite clay, contaminated a popular recreational lake that also provides drinking water for residents of Chester county.
The spills are down to construction of the Mariner East (ME) pipelines - a beleaguered multibillion-dollar project to transport highly volatile liquids extracted by fracking gas shale fields in western Pennsylvania to an export facility in Delaware county in the east, ready to ship to Europe to manufacture plastics.
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