In his first year, Gov. Josh Shapiro forged alliances with the gas industry,

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News and is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.

In June 2020, then Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro appeared at a press conference in Harrisburg to announce the findings of a two-year grand jury investigation into the state’s fracking industry. The 235-page report concluded that Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Health had failed to protect residents from the worst effects of unconventional drilling.

Many of the details in the report were chilling; witnesses who lived near well pads described their pets dying, their livestock giving birth to “deformed” babies and their children suffering from rashes, stomach pains, lethargy and ulcers. One woman talked about her four-year-old’s chronic nosebleeds, which happened so frequently that her daughter’s princess bedspread was “ruined,” and she found herself trying to clean blood out of the carpet with hydrogen peroxide.

The report noted that there was a clear relationship between the appearance of these symptoms and the arrival of nearby fracking operations, and medical and environmental testing confirmed the presence of chemicals and contaminants from the industry in residents’ bodies and homes.

In his remarks, Shapiro emphasized the need for the government to hold powerful oil and gas companies to account. “We can’t rely on big corporations to police themselves,” he said. “After all, they report to their investors and their shareholders. That’s their job. It’s the government’s job to set and enforce the ground rules that protect the public interest. And through multiple administrations, they failed to do that.”

Three years later, and nearly a year into his first term as Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Shapiro announced a “first-of-its-kind collaboration on environmental monitoring and chemical disclosures” with CNX Resources, a natural gas company, that the administration said would “advance commonsense measures to defend public health and safety.” The deal is predicated on CNX’s willingness to be “radically transparent” with the public about its own operations.

For some activists in Pennsylvania, Shapiro’s embrace of CNX is indicative of the distance between the governor’s policies on climate and the environment in his first year in office and the priorities he pursued as attorney general. From a working group on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, whose members and agenda were kept secret for months, to the governor’s unequivocal support for building hydrogen hubs, even if they use natural gas, environmentalists who were once optimistic about Shapiro’s election are disappointed.

‘Jekyll and Hyde’

The governor’s 2024 budget address, delivered on Tuesday in Harrisburg, did little to dispel their concerns. There were few mentions of climate change or the environment, and the administration’s new 10-year strategic economic development plan, called “Pennsylvania Gets It Done,” unveiled last week and highlighted in the speech, relies in part on leveraging Pennsylvania’s natural gas resources.

“It’s really like a Jekyll and Hyde thing since he was attorney general and governor,” said Shannon Smith, the executive director of FracTracker Alliance, a nonprofit based in Johnstown that uses data and mapping tools to analyze and track the impacts of exposure to oil and gas development. “If you compare the two, they’re not even the same person.”

At the time of the grand jury announcement, environmentalists voiced support for its report’s eight policy recommendations for the state government “to minimize the hazards arising from unconventional drilling.” According to the Center for Coalfield Justice, an environmental and public health nonprofit in Southwestern Pennsylvania, the investigation’s findings “validated” residents’ doubts about the claims made by fracking companies drilling near their homes and their skepticism about DEP’s willingness—and ability—to regulate the industry.

In November, some of those same advocates were dismayed when Shapiro announced the partnership with CNX Resources, a natural gas company that Shapiro had charged with violating the Air Pollution Control Act in 2021 when he was attorney general.

As part of the deal, CNX would “voluntarily expand its no-drill zones” in Pennsylvania from 500 to 600 feet and to 2,500 feet near vulnerable sites like schools and hospitals. It would also conduct “intensive” air and water quality monitoring, disclose chemicals used in drilling and fracking to the public and provide access to two future wells so that DEP could study air emissions at the sites and “make it possible…