If they can carry a gun as an officer or enforce criminal and vehicle codes they are act 120 certified. Almost 40% of PA state police employees aren't certified. Because you need people to do all the other stuff. People are confusing sherrif employees with actual deputies. The person who processes your carry permit probably isn't a police officer. But the person who does has a gun and does prisoner transport absolutely is.

>Exelon is just Philadelphia Electric but broken up

Exelon definitely isn't just PECO broken up. Not even close. Exelon was formed when PECO and Com Ed (Illinois) were merged. They did shift the Maryland service areas from PECO to DPL. But Exelon also owns BGE, ACE, and PEPCO. Exelon is the largest electric parent company in the US. They have around 10 million customers for electric. PECO has one 1.6.

I won't defend them. I consult for them, so I have a pretty good idea of how they operate and they've screwed me pretty bad at times. But you don't seem to have any idea what you are talking about.

They do have general purpose law enforcement powers. They are duly employed muncipal officers. If a sherrif deputy has cause for any possible felony, misdemeanor, breach of peace, or has been requested to assist by any other law enforcement agency, they can absolutely act in the same capacity as any other police officer. They aren't typically out patrolling or responding to 911 calls because it isn't their assigned duties. Pass a sheriff deputy at high speed over a double yellow and see what the judge thinks when you tell him the officer was forbidden by state law to stop and cite you. It isn't that they can't, it's just that they usually don't. I'm guessing OP's question came because of the recent video of a Berks County sherrif arresting a guy who tried to rob a cabbie. He absolutely had the power to arrest him as a LEO.

Conowingo is fine except all the pollution it dumps into the Chesapeake because everyone is fighting over who should pay for dredging. And a lot of that is on PA for not complying with the EPA consent decree. Sediment and erosion control as well as water quality laws in PA are garbage.

They don't. And I'm pretty sure Port Deposit is Delmarva now. PECO trucks wouldn't even be there unless it was someone commuting. The dam has been officially owned by Exelon for a while. Although both Delmarva and PECO are owned by Exelon. As is BGE. And Constellation who operates Muddy Run. Conowingo Dam was completed in 1928. So yeah, years ago. Just a few.

Downstream flooding does occur at times, the last bad one was the kid 90s. And Exelon really needs to dredge behind the dam. That has been a long running fight. But that is more about pollution in the Chesapeake Bay than flood risk. And honestly, Port Deposit shouldn't be more than a marina and freight track. It barely is more than that. It made sense to build there over 100 years ago just like a lot of flood plains. But it doesn't make sense now.

>you wouldn't need to build the destructive supplemental power supplies in the first place.

Yes you would, just less of them. A major manufacturing plant isn't going to be able to fully supply it's power with just solar on its roof tops. It would need a massive solar farm plus a lot of battery storage. You might be able to supply, and even oversupply, your house most of the year. And when you are generating more than you need you can help supply your neighbors. But you aren't going to be able move that excess generation very far. Like anything, distance causes losses. That is why we have giant transformers on one end to transmit electricity at high voltage and low current, then switch it back to low voltages and higher current for actual use.

I'm not saying this plan is good, but I wanted to add some perspective. So there is an 850 MW solar farm in China. It's one of the largest in the world. It covers 8.9 square miles. One tenth the land usage. The reservoir would be 0.9 square miles. An average on shore wind turbine produces about 2.75 MW so you'd need about 310 of them. That works out to 20-40 square miles. Of course in the case of wind you can use that land for other things, which is good. But York County isn't exactly great place to build wind turbines. I'm not even going to bother to do math on geothermal.

I'm just talking about land usage so far. You also have to consider how you will transmit and distribute that power. You need substations to increase voltage and lower current. You need more lines whether underground or on poles. Distributed generation like on-site solar or small wind turbines with battery banks can work great for lower loads in densely populated areas like homes in cities. It is definitely something we should be doing a whole lot more of. But managing a grid is just insanely complex.

Okay, now I am sure you have met goats. Because only someone who has had a fair amount of experience and loves them would use "ornery." "Yeah, Beezlegoat was a bit excitable yesterday, but he only crotch shotted me with a hoof once and left two new bruises."

Probably natural gas, at least initially. There may have been secondary dust explosions. To have that big of a dust explosion is unlikely because a very large amount of the building would have to be filled with a lot suspended dust. I know flammable dust explosions can be huge, but there were workers in those spaces so there would have to be significant control methods even if they weren't following safety rules. They probably wouldn't be able to work if there was that flour and or sugar dust in the air.

People are stupid. I worked a pretty large natural gas explosion investigation at a medium sized suburban commercial building. There were multiple 911 calls reporting a potential leak, but when the fire department showed up, almost no one had evacuated. People were still in their yoga class or catching up on some work on a Saturday. Thankfully it didn't blow up until shortly after the fire department got there and no one was injured.

Of course there is the possibility that the company are shit bags and didn't allow shut downs or evacuation. But it isn't a certainty.

Because they are in fact wrong. Fine sugar particulates suspended in air in an enclosed space can be sufficient fuel for an explosion. There are NFPA standards on it. But that's Reddit for ya.

Sugar "dust" when suspended in air in an enclosed space can create an explosive mix of fuel and air. In those cases the only fuel need is the suspended sugar particulates. There are NFPA standards on mitigating explosion risk in sugar processing facilities.

Yep. If it was just a rescue farm and they did real good PR, that could go over well with that crowd. But I know vegans who won't eat honey or use anything with beeswax in it because the bees can't consent. So that faction probably aren't going to be okay with a farm breeding goats for any reason. This story is like reporting on a distillery that decided it wouldn't attend an AA event. I'm not vegetarian or vegan. But know your audience.

>these gentle animals.

Have you met goats?

Follow all the other rules, especially noise and fire related ones, and you'll likely be fine. Make sure you don't exceed vehicle and tent limits. Rangers usually aren't coming around and doing head counts. They usually just want to make sure no one is being disruptive or dangerous.

I'm a civil engineer, specifically geotechnical, who has done a lot of work in the area. PA isn't really special. Many PA roads were just built shitty, so they require more maintenance, which costs more money in the long run, which means money is drained on maintenance that could have been spent on actually building the roads right in the first place. All those other states have their own challenges when it comes to road construction. Go ahead and build a road in Delaware when groundwater is six inches below grade. See how easy that is. Just look at border transissions. The climate and terrain don't typically change because you are one mile or so either side of the state line. But road conditions definitely do.

We have built pretty good roads through much more adverse terrain and climate than you will find in PA. We've only been building paved roads for a few thousand years, but I'm pretty sure we can overcome the climate and terrain challenges offered by PA if it was done right from the start.

I just moved from Maryland to up by York. I was in Harford County for the previous 4-5 years and Baltimore City for about 15 years before that.

The main reason was that properties are considerably cheaper and I wanted a fairly small house on a fairly decent amount of land, which is more common here. I work from home, but wanted to stay within about an hour of Baltimore so I was still fairly close to friends and family. The school taxes can absolutely murder you in some areas, so you have to watch out for that. But the income tax was like 3.5% less than an unincorporated part of Harford County. I make enough that the lower income tax covers all my property taxes and leaves me with about $500 extra a year.

Just adding a few things, mostly about building and buying, to the already great answers. Always check the floodplain maps if there are any water channels nearby. It will severely restrict what you can do with the property. There are DCNR grants to turn lawn into native habitat. I have two acres of turf I don't want. Violent crime isn't going to be much of a problem. There generally aren't murderers roaming the woods. Isolation does come with risks, like access to emergency services. But getting murdered isn't one of them. Crackheads don't tend to live in rural areas because there is no one there to buy crack from. Meth can be an issue since just about anyone can make that. But they still aren't likely to do worse than break into your shed or garage and steal some tools or an ATV. And that is unlikely too. They are too busy being high.

Make sure you can get decent internet unless that isn't a concern for you. I had to pass on a few places that checked more boxes than what I bought because I could only get satellite and I work from home.

Have a civil engineer look at the land before you buy if you are building a house. Not all properties are buildable. And even if they are, it might be considerably more expensive than you expected. For instance if they have to excavate rock to install the foundations. Also, it can take a long time to build a house. So you'll be paying for two properties for a while. A land developer doing a sub division can get a house done in a few months because they need to turn over the investment quickly and get work done cheaper since they can provide a lot of work. But a custom home can easily take over a year. Or more right now. I have friends who will have waited over 2 years to have a factory framed 800 sq ft vacation home. If you get a house built also try to contractually lock in material prices. You don't want to get screwed if things go nuts like recently and suddenly lumber costs go up like 400%.

You will likely be on well and your only power source will likely be electric. You also won't be a priority in a power outage. So plan for a back up generator with a backfeed disconnect. Even if you use natural gas, oil, kerosene, or propane for heat, the furnace will be electrically controlled. So you still have no heat in an outage. You also don't have water because the well pump needs electricity. Rural areas tend to lose power more because of trees coming down on overhead lines.

Get a buyer's agent, not just a realtor. If you haven't been through the real estate buying process, it is a nightmare. I negotiate multi-million dollar contracts for engineering work on critical infrastructure and that is considerably easier. It takes longer of course, but it's less bullshit.

It looks like the service improvement charge is part of a rate case approved by the Public Utilities Commission to add funds to replace aging infrastructure, increase reliability, and expand the grid. It is completely legit and very common in power.

I can't speak on whether or not they deliberately inflated a bill to collect more money. If that is the case it would obviously be a problem. While I do consult in power, PPL is not a client.

I consult for utilities. I don't know City Power and Gas at all. I did glance at their website. They all have shit customer service. But if you can't get them on the phone or get things done through website, I'd avoid them. It looks like they are focused on NYC and are moving into PA as a broker. Basically they just 'buy energy' from the distribution companies and sell it to you at a hopefully fixed rate for a certain period. A lot of these companies are not very legit and have clauses to increase your rates, early cancellation fees, deposits they will do thier best to never give back, etc. You can save money buying from brokers in a deregulated market, but it usually requires changing brokers every 6-12 months. They aren't actually producing anything. They are just gambling.

Yeah, classic white flight. The town even passed laws to try to force the mostly Dominican immigrants out. It is a bit of an extreme example. But also the population had been declining from 1950 to 2000. It was a coal town, and well the coal industry hasn't exactly been thriving. Immigrants tend to congregate locally. Boston didn't get full of Irish immigrants or Amish country full of Amish by random.

Of course there were plenty of people saying he shouldn't be president. He lost the popular vote. Where are the investigations claiming fraud though?Trump won PA when he wasn't expected to. Was there audits? County Commissioners refusing to certify results? Did the democrats start looking for bamboo in the ballots? Did democrats break into the US capitol to try to stop the certification of the election? Did democrats hold large "stop the steal" protests? Did a bunch of democrats still have Hillary signs up on their lawns two years later?

I'm unaffiliated and there are certainly some major problems with the DNC. But the GOP is giving anti-vax jewish space lasers lady a prime committee position and have a dude who took a 17 year old across state lines to have sex with her still in congress while the Dems forced out Al Franken. And Franken deserved it. But what he did is a pretty low bar compared to sitting congresspeople in the GOP. Clean your house and quit your whining.

How many democrat led investigations into voter fraud or election rigging were there when Trump won?

Fairly small blasting in the ground can travel very far depending on the geology. I have no idea if that was the case here. Setting off explosives in holes with sensors over fairly large areas is actually an engineering method to measure rock and such. Although most places don't let us do that. We have to hit a metal plate with a big hydraulic hammer instead. If they were using it to clear rock it would generally be a much bigger blast.

They are asking you to take a pay cut to avoid violating labor laws. So it isn't illegal, just incredibly unethical. Basically they want to pay you less for the first 40 hours so they can still pay you 1.5x for over 40 without actually paying you more total. If they were paying you $14 / hour for your first 40 and any OT, they were breaking the law and owe you back pay. They should have payed you $21 for any OT. There is a fair chance a former employee is suing them if that was the case.

I'm not a lawyer, but I deal with this as a manager and there have been lawsuits I was involved in. There is no possibility that you are exempt from overtime pay. Even if you met all the other criteria to be exempt, you don't get paid enough.

Up to you if you want to pursue any potential back pay. You can start with the state department of labor or maybe get a free consult from a labor attorney.