Gas fines, Great Lakes and green jobs

• Emily Previti/PA Post
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  Emily is a reporter for WITF who’s been covering voting and elections since July 2019 as part of her former role with statehouse accountability news organization PA Post. She was the senior reporter for statewide public media collaboration Keystone Crossroads. Previously, she covered city hall for PennLive/The Patriot-News (Harrisburg, Pa.), was a watchdog and city hall reporter at The Press of Atlantic City and reported for the Northwest Herald. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
  
  See other articles by Emily Previti for WITF.

 Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

An abandoned well in McKean County.

From The Context, PA Post’s weekday email newsletter:

Environmental update

Scott Detrow / StateImpact Pennsylvania

An abandoned well in McKean County.

• Diversified Gas & Oil Corporation will pay $7 million to address its more than 1,400 abandoned oil and gas wells in the commonwealth, most in western Pa. The company also pledged to plug the wells or start using them within the next 14 years as part of its recent settlement with the state Department of Environmental Protection. Reid Frazier has more details on the agreement in this StateImpact Pennsylvania story.

• The Great Lakes hold 20 percent of the world’s water. President Donald Trump wants to scale back regulations in place to limit pollution of the lakes. John Flesher has the full story for the Associated Press.

• Philadelphia boasts more than 9,000 green jobs, and the number continues to grow. But a relatively small percentage of the positions are held by residents of neighborhoods plagued by environmental injustices, according to the people behind new initiative EcoWURD, which is aimed at increasing their representation in the city’s burgeoning sustainability sector. Darryl Murphy has more here for PlanPhilly.

Best of the rest

Mel Evans / AP Photo

Computer mouse pads with Secure the Vote logo on them are seen on a vendor’s table at a convention of state secretaries of state in Philadelphia last summer.

• It’s almost spring, which means the primary is coming up soon. This year, Pa. is looking at several special elections for state and federal offices. PA Post’s Ed Mahon has key dates and other info here.

• The ACLU of Pennsylvania says the city of Philadelphia is jailing people simply because they can’t afford bail, and is petitioning the state Supreme Court to intervene after the organization tracked 2,000 bail hearings during the past year. It found the proceedings typically lasted less than five minutes and 40 percent involved cash bail. WHYY’s Aaron Moselle has the full story.

• A York man on death row for a double murder is getting a new trial. Noel Montalvo, now 54, was convicted in 2003, nearly five years after the killing of Manuel Santana, then 37, and Miriam Ascencio, then 44. Ascencio had been in a relationship with Montalvo’s brother Milton, who’s also in prison for the crimes and is appealing his sentence. The York Daily Record explains why the court has agreed to hear Noel Montalvo’s case again.