The dump trucks rolled in on Jan. 18, 2011 -- unexpected and as yet unapproved by the state.

Inhabitants of tiny Sunbury, Pa., say they witnessed 27 trucks pass through a small residential street that day. They contained foul liquids and "smelled like a combination of diesel fuel and dirt," according to witness and resident Cora Campbell.

The trucks were hauling waste amassed by hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," in the nearby Marcellus Shale that sweeps through much of the eastern United States. Fracking involves shooting water, sand and chemicals down well bores at high pressure to access previously unattainable deposits of shale oil or natural gas. The process has drawn criticism for its negative environmental impacts.

The carriers ultimately unloaded at a once-abandoned industrial site near the Susquehanna River that had been transformed into a waste transfer station.

State regulators from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and local environmental activists pressured the owner of the site, logistics firm Moran Industries, to reveal what was happening and how it could move such quantities of fracking waste without environmental permits.

Later it was unveiled that the company could exploit a loophole opened by its subsidiary's contract with an interstate railroad, agreed on three months after the waste transfer station came online. The deal made Moran Industries exempt from Pennsylvania's permitting laws.

The scrutiny also revealed a string of connections between Moran Industries owner John Moran Jr. and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R). Moran had donated $100,000 to Corbett's gubernatorial campaign and gave $2,400 to Corbett for personal travel. He hosted the governor and his wife on a yacht off Rhode Island in 2011 on a trip that didn't come to light until last fall, after an amendment to an earlier Corbett ethics-disclosure form. The trips came at a time when the DEP had the power to make or break the new waste transfer facility that had opened so suddenly in Sunbury.

"The broader issue is that during the period when Moran was traveling with the governor, his company had much to gain from favorable interpretation from the DEP of this facility," said Mark Szybist, a Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-based lawyer for the environmental group PennFuture who has closely followed the story.

Corbett and his aides have vigorously denied that Moran influenced his policies or actions. A DEP spokesman also denied any pressure from or contact with the governor's office about the Sunbury operations. The DEP finally approved of Moran Industries' acting without a permit on March 16 of last year -- about 14 months after the site began processing waste (Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 15). -- BS