Story by Curtis Walsh – Beaver County Radio. Published July 24, 2026 7:15 A.M.

(Baden, Pa) The Beaver County YMCA has announced that the Old Economy swimming pool will be reopening on August 1st.

The pool will be open daily from August 1st through the 23rd, followed by being open on weekends from the 29th through September 13th.

Admission to the pool is free, however registration will be required before attending to help manage capacity and reduce wait times.

Pre-registration will be held on Saturday, July 25th and Monday July 27th from 10am until 2pm.

Guests will also be able to register online at any time by visiting the Beaver County YMCA website.

Beaver County Radio News Staff. Published July 24, 2026 7:28 A.M.

(Rochester, Pa) The Rochester Police Department is asking for help from the public to identify a theft suspect. They say the alleged theft took place at Sheetz.

Rochester Police posted security footage to Facebook Thursday showing a person taking what appeared to be a pair of canned alcoholic beverages from the fridge and walking away.

It is currently unclear if the theft consists entirely of the beverages or if other items were stolen as well.

The Rochester Police are asking anyone who has information on the alleged crime to contact them at 724-775-1100.

In the flurry of last-minute dealmaking to approve this year’s state budget, legislators tucked in eleventh-hour language that relaxes Pennsylvania’s rules for publicly reporting the results of lead tests on school drinking water.

State law does not require schools to test for lead, as long as the topic is discussed at a public meeting annually. But if schools do test, they were previously required to report any finding above zero to the state so the results could be posted publicly.

The new provision, quietly inserted in the final 48 hours of budget negotiations earlier this month, requires schools that test to report lead levels above five parts per billion.

Lawmakers passed the change after several statewide associations representing school boards, principals, and other school officials complained to education leaders that the state’s prior lead testing requirements were unrealistic, according to records reviewed by Spotlight PA.

Environmental groups say the change hinders the public from knowing the amount of lead in school drinking water, even though it’s a toxic substance with documented harmful impacts to children’s health.

“At the end of the day, it means a lot of parents will be in the dark, and every day we know there will be kids out there drinking school water with lead in it even though we know that lead is unsafe at any level,” said David Masur, executive director of the advocacy group PennEnvironment.

The original law, Act 39 of the Public School Code, passed as part of the budget in 2018. It created the requirement to test drinking water for lead or to discuss the issue at a public meeting. It also mandated that when lead is detected, a school must create a plan that ensures no one is exposed to contamination and provide alternative forms of drinking water. The state, meanwhile, is required to publicly post information about elevated tests.

But critics say the law is flawed to the point of being ineffective. Not only is it easy for schools to avoid testing; there is no accountability mechanism for ensuring schools that test report the elevated results to the state.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education also failed to accurately implement the law until recently.

According to emails reviewed by Spotlight PA, education officials initially provided guidance to school districts to report lead levels exceeding 15 parts per billion, rather than anything over zero.

Masur was one of the people who pointed out the error to administrators several times, he said.

It wasn’t until this year that officials revised the guidance, according to a copy of an email viewed by Spotlight PA. The agency told districts in May that when “a school tests for lead in drinking water and the result is in excess of 0 parts per billion,” the school must take the actions required by the law, including reporting the result for public posting.

In an email to Spotlight PA, a department spokesperson did not respond when asked why it took so long to make the fix.

The May directive prompted immediate pushback from school organizations and advocates and precipitated lawmakers’ decision to loosen reporting requirements.

State Rep. Peter Schweyer (D., Lehigh), chair of the House Education Committee, supported the change and pointed to a new requirement for schools to compile reports about the general state of their facilities, including the age of their buildings and whether they have damage.

The first of those reports is due at the end of next year, and they are required every five years subsequently.

“Up until this budget, we’ve never collected meaningful data across the commonwealth,” Schweyer said, “which is unreal to realize.”

Still, the new inventory reports do not explicitly require schools to report any information about lead. Lawmakers also didn’t address many of the other flaws critics have flagged about the lead testing law.

Faulty guidance

At the heart of state education officials’ incorrect guidance to schools were two different federal benchmarks for lead levels in drinking water.

The 2018 law said schools must implement an action plan if lead levels in drinking water exceed the “maximum contaminant level goal.” The Environmental Protection Agency sets that goal at zero parts of lead per billion. In other words, if schools detected any lead in their drinking water, they had to report it to the state.

But the EPA also sets what is called the “lead action level,” which is 15 parts per billion. “The lead action level is a measure of the effectiveness of the corrosion control treatment in water systems,” according to the agency. “The action level is not a standard for establishing a safe level of lead in a home.”

Lead contaminates drinking water through the corrosion of pipes or other plumbing fixtures. Any level of lead exposure can cause learning disabilities or damage to the nervous system, especially in young children, according to the EPA.

When the education department initially provided guidance to schools on the law, Masur said it told them to report if lead levels exceeded the federal action requirement of 15 parts per billion, not the EPA’s maximum contaminant level goal of zero parts per billion.

When state education officials issued the correct guidance earlier this year, the pushback was almost immediate.

A letter sent on June 9 to Pennsylvania Education Secretary Carrie Rowe, signed by six Pennsylvania school associations and obtained by Spotlight PA, urged her to consider limitations to achieving the standard.

“We respectfully encourage PDE to distinguish between an aspirational public health goal and a practical, scientifically actionable standard for implementation and reporting purposes,” the letter said.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association, one of the groups that signed the letter, wrote in an email to Spotlight PA that resource-starved schools need better investments in infrastructure if they’re to meet stronger lead standards.

“Equating any detectable presence of lead with a significant exposure risk may create unnecessary concern among families and communities while setting expectations that are difficult, if not impossible, to meet in practice,” it wrote.

The decision to increase the amount of lead that can go unreported in schools took some back and forth between the Democratic-controlled state House and GOP-led Senate.

Members originally planned to increase the reporting level to the EPA’s “lead action level,” or 15 parts per billion, according to a draft of the code.

House Democratic spokesperson Beth Rementer wrote in an email to Spotlight PA that this level was championed by Republicans who control the state Senate before Democrats advocated for a more stringent level of five parts per billion.

The Republican caucus’ initial plan to set the level at 15 parts per billion was at the request of education leaders, Kate Flessner, spokesperson for Senate Republicans, said in an email to Spotlight PA. But after conversations with other legislative leaders and advocates, lawmakers decided to lower the threshold.

Schweyer said the new measure of five parts per billion balances public health concerns and what is realistic for schools to achieve. It’s also in line with the FDA’s standard for bottled water, Rementer wrote.

Masur said he would have preferred that lawmakers get more input from environmental, parental, and public health groups before making a change. Public hearings, for instance, would have allowed for more debate and context on what is undeniably a complex issue.

Instead, he said, the change was rushed through on a Saturday morning, as lawmakers hastily wrapped up the budget that weekend.

“It happened as many things tend to in Harrisburg: at the eleventh hour, in a back room somewhere in the Capitol, on a Saturday morning in July,” Masur said. “It’s a very undemocratic way to implement a wildly unpopular policy.”

A flawed law

Critics say there are several issues with the original 2018 law.

Schools can forgo lead testing if they hold a public meeting to discuss the issue. There is nothing in the law that requires schools to report any information about these meetings to the state, so it’s impossible to tell whether districts actually comply with this provision.

Public meetings aren’t necessarily well-publicized, said Chad Baer, a parent from the Philadelphia suburbs and public health graduate of Yale. He has researched lead reporting in Pennsylvania schools and advocates for its removal.

The way the law was written allows some schools to tuck brief discussions about lead into any of their public meetings to escape testing requirements, he said.

There’s also no way to know if schools that do test and find lead in their water actually report to the state as required.

Under the law, schools with “elevated” lead levels must complete a report with information about how much was found, when the testing occurred, and remediation plans to address the problem. The state Department of Education then posts that information in a spreadsheet on its website. However, there’s no penalty for not submitting that report.

The agency says the online file is updated quarterly. The most recently reported tests are from August 2025 on the spreadsheet currently available online.

In an email to Spotlight PA, a spokesperson said the department “is in the process of modernizing our data collection system to make reporting easier for schools and more accessible to citizens.”

There are also no standards for how testing should be conducted. Baer said he discovered schools could run water for a period of time before testing, which would lower the lead levels that would show up. Testing equipment also wasn’t standardized across districts or verified by the state, and there was little state-level oversight of testing accuracy or consistency, Baer said.

In email correspondence from 2024 that Baer shared with Spotlight PA, a state education department official told him that “the interpretation of the statute was a local issue,” and questions about lead testing should be raised with school districts directly, despite it being set by state law.

“Breaking it down at the piecemeal level of district by district is totally ineffective,” said Baer. “It’s got to be top-down enforcement that things are actually being tracked and ensuring it’s a safe environment.”

Education department officials, responding to questions from Spotlight PA, wrote that the agency is not granted the authority to enforce remediation plans, but that the posting of data “ensures public notice.”

After the 2018 law passed, state Sen. Art Haywood (D., Montgomery) told WHYY the lead provisions were a compromise and “a first step toward a more comprehensive legislation.”

However, the new law does not fix those loopholes and problems. There are also no bills before the legislature that would mandate lead testing in schools.

Instead, two companion bills — HB 341 and SB 759 — propose to address lead-related infrastructure issues by requiring schools to replace water fountains with ones that are filtered. Both bills currently sit in state House and Senate committees.

When similar bills circulated in the previous legislative session, school organizations still found them to be unrealistic, despite a proposed state grant meant to fund eligible schools.

In an email obtained by Spotlight PA, a lobbyist for the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials wrote to several legislative offices that it opposed the concept because “it requires a one-size-fits-all approach to a complex problem and creates a mandate onto school entities that will not be fully funded through the grant program provided in the bill.”

The Association of School Business Officials also signed the letter sent to Rowe last month. Officials there did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Baer said that the cost of remediation — say, replacing a drinking fountain — isn’t higher than the cost of not replacing it.

“(Lead) causes behavioral issues, lifelong cognitive impairment,” he said. “So the cost is being paid; it’s just that people aren’t seeing it as a line item. It’s being paid for by the kids.”

___

Spotlight PA’s Angela Couloumbis contributed.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — After surviving the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, after presiding over multiple funerals for his slain congregants, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers struggled to pray.

“There was this emptiness to it,” recalls Myers, of Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh.

He turned to the biblical Book of Psalms — its hymns, poetry and prayers covering “the entire spectrum of human existence and emotion, from elation to utter despair,” Myers recalled. “Something told me it’s in there somewhere, the inspiration that I need.”

He started reading all 150 chapters, in order. When he got to 121, he found words that clicked: “My help comes from God, maker of the heavens and the Earth.”

“There it was,” Myers says today. ”My faith did have the answers. It just took time to be able to find them.”

Myers, 70, is retiring this month as spiritual leader of Tree of Life, a position he had assumed just over a year before the shattering events of Oct. 27, 2018.

On that Sabbath morning, a gunman shot his way into the synagogue, shouting antisemitic invective and murdering 11 worshippers from the three congregations sharing the building — Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life.

In the nearly eight years since, the congregation has worked to grieve and heal. It endured a long-delayed trial leading to the gunman’s death sentence. It experienced the disruptive pandemic and the groundbreaking for a new building.

“My mission has come to a conclusion to the best that I could,” Myers said in an interview. “It was time for the next chapter also for the Tree of Life. It’s time to step aside so that there is space for new voices.”

Rabbi says goodbye with signature blend of scripture and pop culture

Myers plans to return to his native New Jersey to be near his daughter and granddaughter. He wants to catch up on reading, do some writing, check off some “bucket list” goals with his wife. He also plans to work more on healing his own inner wounds after prioritizing the congregation’s needs.

“As Mr. Spock says in ‘Star Trek II,’ the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” says Myers, who frequently glides between scriptural and pop culture references.

Myers similarly quoted from the Beatles and Broadway’s “Rent” in a farewell address to his congregation on July 17. He thanked congregants, clergy, public officials, the police officers who risked their lives to rescue him, some suffering serious injuries.

He recalled each victim by name. “May your memories always be for a blessing,” he said. He concluded by having the congregation join him in singing Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend.”

Members, in interviews, pay tribute to Myers and what he achieved.

“He was really just a new rabbi and hardly broken in yet, and we went through the thing that we went through,” says Audrey Glickman, a survivor of the attack. “He has steered a constant ship and taken care of everyone, and I think he has earned himself a rest.”

His journey to Tree of Life started in his childhood synagogue’s choir

Myers grew up near Newark, New Jersey, recalling summers at the beach at Asbury Park, where transistor radios were tuned to pop music stations. As a boy, he sang soprano in his synagogue choir. By his mid-teens, he was leading that choir and developing his distinctive high tenor voice — one that, in 2018, was heard worldwide as he sang the traditional Jewish mourner’s prayers for those who fell.

Myers started college as a pre-med student but soon pivoted toward his deep interests in Judaism and music. He went to school to become a cantor or hazzan, a type of Jewish clergy who leads worship.

After several years serving congregations in New York and New Jersey in the middle-of-the-road Conservative denomination of Judaism, he studied for ordination as a rabbi and came to Tree of Life. It was a small Conservative congregation, sharing its building with two others in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, the heart of Jewish Pittsburgh.

Sabbath services had just begun that Saturday morning. After hearing gunfire in the lobby, he urged worshippers to flee if they were able — and those who were frail to lie down or hide. He took shelter as he heard gunshots ring out.

“I was praying,” Myers recalled on the witness stand during the gunman’s 2023 trial. “I thought about the history of my people, how we’ve been persecuted and hunted and slaughtered for centuries, and how all of them must have felt the moments before their death, and what did they do.”

He asked God to forgive him for being unable to save his congregants. He expected to die but was escorted to safety by police officers.

He was still wearing his prayer shawl.

After surviving the attack, Myers’ leadership stood out

In the days afterward, the funeral services unfolded. Alan Hausman, a lay leader in the congregation who has long worked in public safety, accompanied Myers throughout that week. Responding to deadly emergencies “takes a toll on you,” Hausman says. “And he kept going.”

With its damaged building a crime scene, Tree of Life began worshipping at a nearby synagogue, Rodef Shalom. For Myers and others, it was crucial to resume their Jewish observances in defiance of the killer’s intentions.

There were uplifting moments. Sam Schachner, the congregation’s then-president, recalls his son’s bar mitzvah a few weeks after the attacks — the first truly joyful event after Oct. 27.

Myers “could have reasonably said, ‘I’ve been through a lot. Can we postpone this?’” Schachner says. “He didn’t. He had this ability to be there for others when he was going through such pain.”

Then the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the healing. Myers led remote services from his home. But presiding over his daughter’s outdoor wedding helped, fulfilling another Psalm’s promise. “God turned my mourning into rejoicing,” he says.

After resuming in-person worship, the three congregations braced for a long-delayed trial. It began in the spring of 2023, just as Myers’ daughter was expecting her first child.

Myers told prosecutors that if the baby was a boy, he would attend his circumcision even if it conflicted with Myers’ scheduled testimony — unwilling to “let the shooter deprive me” of partaking in a key Jewish rite. Instead, a granddaughter arrived, and Myers was on the witness stand as scheduled.

The lengthy trial concluded with the conviction and death sentence of the gunman, who remains on death row.

With shared trauma, Tree of Life bonds with church shooting survivors

Tree of Life began a meaningful relationship with Mother Emanuel AME Church of Charleston, South Carolina, a historically Black congregation where a racist gunman killed nine Bible study participants in 2015. Members visited each others’ congregations, and Myers developed a bond with Emanuel’s pastor, the Rev. Eric Manning.

When Myers testified, Manning was in the courtroom. They understand each other. Manning believes it’s important to speak out against rising antisemitism and other forms of hatred — a word he refuses to utter, speaking only of “H.”

“Antisemitism is the world’s oldest disease,” he says. “It doesn’t require any sort of prescription or inoculation to eliminate. It requires people to honor the worth and dignity of every human being.”

Most of the aging and damaged Tree of Life building has been demolished. Plans for a new building, while scaled back from original designs, call for a memorial to the victims, along with antisemitism exhibits, a sanctuary and event space.

The building is slated to open in 2028, says Carole Zawatsky, who heads the nonprofit, The Tree of Life, which is overseeing the project in cooperation with the similarly named congregation.

“The memorial is there to remember each of the 11 victims. To always ground us,” Zawatsky says.

Myers was “the right guy at the right time,” says Robin Friedman, current president of the congregation. She calls it a ”bittersweet” departure.

Recently about 50 Jewish families, many with young children, joined the congregation, bringing their own energy and ideas. That has boosted hopes for the future.

Says Glickman: “We intend not to let the shooter win and not to fade away into history.”

___

AP video journalist Jessie Wardarski contributed. She and Smith were among the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette journalists who shared the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for coverage of the synagogue massacre.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

(File Photo of an American Flag)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System has now received funding for Non-recurring Maintenance projects in the third quarter of the fiscal year 2026, after it received funds earlier in the first and second quarters of the year.

This funding is part of a record $4.8 billion in nationwide VA spending to improve, modernize and repair health care facilities in the fiscal year 2026 via the Veterans Health Administration’s Non-recurring Maintenance program.

According to a release from the VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, (VAPHS) funding for VAPHS in the third quarter of FY2026 will be used to:

• Upgrade infrastructure at the University Drive (UD) and H.J. Heinz III campuses to accommodate Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM). VHA’s EHRM provides a seamless and paperless transition for veterans moving from receiving care on active duty to receiving care at VA.
• Renovate three floors at UD as part of an ongoing plan to move patient-facing areas to lower levels for Veterans’ convenience, reducing wait times and elevator trips.
• Repair fire and smoke dampers at UD.
• Replace sanitizing, coil ultraviolet lighting systems in the heating, ventilating and air conditioning system at UD.
• Repair concrete and expansion joints at UD’s parking garage.
• Replace piping that carries clean, pressurized water from the city’s lines to Primary Care at UD.
• Modernize sterile-processing service’s medical-instrument cleaning and water-filtration systems for cleaning, disinfecting and packaging medical/surgical tools at UD.

VA has obligated a total of $2.2 billion of the total $4.8 billion committed for the fiscal year 2026, and that obligation of funds in the third quarter includes:

• $915 million to repair and upgrade outdated infrastructure systems in medical facilities.
• $229 million for maintenance and modernization of facility infrastructure to support future electronic health record system updates.
• $11 million for major building upgrades like elevators, electrical systems, and boiler plants.

(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – This photo made available by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office shows Vance Luther Boelter, the man charged with killing the top Democrat in the Minnesota House and her husband, and wounding a state senator and his wife, as he was arrested on June 15, 2025. (Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office via AP, File)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Friends and family of Minnesota Democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman said the man sentenced Thursday to two life terms plus 40 years after pleading guilty to her murder failed to eliminate her spirit and her legacy, but caused enduring fear and fury as he changed their lives forever.

Fellow lawmakers and survivors of the shooting spoke Thursday at the sentencing hearing for Vance Boelter, the man who pleaded guilty last month to federal charges related to the killing of former House Speaker Hortman and her husband Mark, as well as critically wounding state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette.

Boelter, 59, agreed to plead guilty in June, almost a year after the Minneapolis-area attacks, so federal prosecutors would not seek the death penalty. Mark Hortman’s father and siblings voiced anger that he could not be sentenced to death.

U.S. District Court Judge John R. Tunheim said it was “the longest sentence I have imposed after hearing thousands of cases over the years, but I do believe it is deserved.”

Victims and survivors describe the impact of the attacks

In court Thursday, Sen. Hoffman said he and his family are constantly reminded of the extraordinary violence of that night, even in the mundane details of day-to-day life. He said they don’t receive mail at home anymore, they have installed solid steel doors for protection, and they have changed how they do everyday tasks because of their injuries.

“The defendant looked me in the eyes and pulled the trigger. The defendant looked at my wife and chose to do the same,” Hoffman said. “My wife and I now live with injuries. We live with our bodies remembering the gunfire.”

Yvette Hoffman said she has been too traumatized to work since the attack in their home, and that she sees a therapist weekly.

“I will never forget looking down and watching my blood slowly stream down that white washing machine as I felt myself sinking to the floor,” she said, barely holding back tears. “We always have an escape plan now. This isn’t how people should live.”

Boelter admitted he spent months identifying and stalking his targets, before driving to their homes disguised as a police officer with the intention of killing them. The killings sparked the largest police search in state history.

Democratic State Rep. Kristin Bahner was one of two other legislators whose homes Boelter visited that night, but she and her family were on vacation. Bahner said the shootings had left her shaken.

“I could not fathom why I was spared and (Hortman) was not,” she said. “You failed because I carry her with me. In my mind and in my heart, she guides me.”

The proposed sentence sparks fury

Mark Hortman’s parents and siblings spoke of their anger Thursday, both at the man who killed him and of the justice system.

“It will not offer me peace of mind that he will have room and board provided for the rest of his life, paid for by my tax dollars,” said Lisa Hortman Bean, Mark’s sister.

Melissa Hortman’s mother and father and the Hortman’s children changed the tone of the statements when they spoke Thursday, remembering them as attentive, loving parents and grandparents and people who had a positive impact on thousands of lives.

Sophie Hortman, their daughter, described in vivid detail having to say goodbye to Gilbert, the golden retriever, also shot by Boelter but who was still alive when they arrived at the veterinary hospital. She talked about the bedtime routine her mother had with Gilbert, who failed his service dog test because he was too friendly, and the care and love she gave him.

“I miss my mom. I miss my dad. I miss my best friends. And I miss believing in the goodness of humanity. I hope that one day these aches feel less sharp. And I know just like the love I feel for my parents, the pain will never go away,” she said through tears.

Colin Hortman talked about his parents not being at his recent wedding, about not dancing with his mother who he had hoped would make his wedding cake. He described the horror of the house, and the panic attacks and crying that have persisted in the year since their murders.

“My days are filled with gray, and the blood that was spilled is the last thing I see before I go to sleep and the first thing I see when I wake,” he said. “There is no sentence that weighs 15 gunshots, a murdered dog and the rest of my life.”

“It is impossible to realize the damage that has been done not only to our family, but to our society,” said Melissa’s father Harold Haluptzok, who repeatedly referred to her as his “little girl.”

“I wish the perpetrator would have sat down and talked to Melissa about his political positions. … if only he did that before he decided to kill them,” Haluptzok added.

Defense attorney says Boelter has remorse

Federal defender Manny Atwal spoke only briefly after the victim impact statements Thursday, saying Boelter showed remorse for his actions by pleading guilty and accepting the life sentences.

Boelter remained silent and sat extremely still for most of the hearing, showing little emotion or reaction to the anguish expressed by the survivors and family members.

After the sentence was read, he said only: “To every person I have caused … emotions … I am truly sorry.”

Boelter pretended to be a police officer to gain access

Boelter went to Hortman’s home, wearing a tactical uniform and mask, about 3:30 a.m. on June 14, 2025. He rang the doorbell while shouting he was a police officer doing a welfare check, according to court documents.

Mark Hortman answered the door. Boelter gave him a fake name and badge number before requesting he summon Melissa Hortman to the door as well. He shot Mark Hortman multiple times before pushing into the house and shooting the lawmaker as she fled upstairs. Melissa and Mark Hortman were killed.

Boelter had already visited the Hoffmans’ home that night, shooting and critically injuring the senator and his wife, according to police and court documents. Court documents said Boelter also went to two other lawmakers’ houses that night. In one instance, no one answered the door, and in the other, Boelter was spooked when a police officer approached him in his car believing he was another officer.

Boelter also faces state charges, including two counts of murder, four counts of attempted murder, impersonating a police officer and animal cruelty. Hoffman and his family filed a personal injury lawsuit against Boelter in April.

(File Photo: A federal agent wears an Immigration and Customs Enforcement badge in New York, June 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is giving up on its plan to use two rural Pennsylvania warehouses to hold thousands of people.

The plan had been held up by the state’s denial of drinking water and wastewater permits, and an ICE lawyer filed paperwork Wednesday withdrawing his agency’s appeal of the denial. The state had raised concerns that the local water and wastewater services in rural areas of Berks and Schuylkill counties were inadequate to handle the thousands of inhabitants envisioned by the federal agency.

ICE did not say what, if anything, it would ultimately use the warehouses for.

But it told the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in a separate letter that it “has considered the final use it will make of this property, and it hereby informs DEP that it will not be using this property as a detention center.”

The letter, dated last week, was released Wednesday by the DEP.

In a statement, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said the warehouses “are not suitable for people and converting them to detention centers would have posed serious risks to the health, safety, and infrastructure of the surrounding communities.”

ICE had been buying warehouses across the U.S. as part of former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s $38 billion plan to rapidly expand detention capacity this year. However, it began retreating from that plan last month.

Noem’s purchases were largely made out of public view and angered communities that were caught by surprise. Some local officials only learned about ICE’s ambitions after the agency bought or leased space for detainees. After Noem was fired, her replacement, Markwayne Mullin, quickly paused the purchase of new warehouses.

(File Photo of a Gavel)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Allegheny County, PA) A federal judge sentenced two men from Pennsylvania to life in prison yesterday after they were convicted of mailing a woman a bomb that detonated, killing her and leveling her home.

There was an explosion and fire at a home in Clearfield, Pennsylvania on October 4th, 2019, and inside the leveled building, police found the body of 34-year-old Shanna Carlson.

The federal agents and their partners with the Pennsylvania state police and the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office identified and indicted two suspects, a methamphetamine dealer, Clint Addleman and one of his customers, Kris Nevling.

They testified in court that they built a bomb and mailed it in a package that was addressed to Carlson, who owed Addleman a drug debt of $1,000.

The agents confirm that Carlson opened the package and inadvertently detonated the bomb, which killed her and leveled the building.

Both suspects were indicted by a federal grand jury and were charged with maliciously destroying property with an explosive device, and Addleman was charged with destruction resulting in death.