Mar 21, 2025 3 min read

Hit: The state continues to chip away at the monumental task of locating and capping orphan and abandoned oil and gas wells. Gov. Josh Shapiro visited Washington County last week to mark his administration capping its 300th well, which is just a fraction of the sites in need of remediation. The Environmental Defense Fund said 8,840 abandoned wells have been documented in the state and says thousands more are out there, potentially polluting the air and water, and harming people’s health. The wells could be in farm fields, forests, waterways, in basements and around homes, according to the Defense Fund. “We know that we’ve got a lot of wells out there,” Shapiro said. “We also know that we don’t know where all of them are. A lot of the mapping that we have for these old wells is just that, old. If you stumble across an orphan or abandoned well, alert DEP. Don’t assume they know it’s there.”

Hit: Kudos to Bethlehem-Center Middle School students, who spent the better part of Wednesday morning cleaning up Beallsville Cemetery, a sprawling final resting place where at least 4,500 are buried. Forty-five student council members rolled up their sleeves to fill trash bags with old Christmas decorations, flowers, aluminum cans, broken bottles, and other items, and re-set flags and markers that had been blown down. They also tackled the back-breaking task of cleaning nearly 200 years worth of dirt that had accumulated on the tombstones of Revolutionary and Civil War veterans buried there, a job that requires repeat application of a special cleaning solution to break down the grime. Ella Valentino, one of the students involved in the project, embraced the work, saying it offered her the chance to help her community. “It makes me feel really helpful that we can clean the (headstones) and make them look nice again, and it’s just nice to do this to honor the veterans who served in wars,” she said.

Hit: Every second counts in an emergency, and Canon-McMillan school administrators added another layer of safety in their buildings that will reduce response time in critical situations such as school shootings, medical crises and weather events. Within the next few weeks, staff members will be wearing CrisisAlert badges that will enable them to call for assistance in emergencies. The CrisisAlert system is credited for saving lives in a George school shooting, resulting in a quick response and saving lives when a student fatally shot four people. “Everything happens within seconds, and those seconds matter,” said Dr. Gregory Taranto, superintendent. “You’re saving time, and time saves lives. If I’m a teacher, I know as soon as I press that button help is on the way.”