A new report says Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection has made a serious dent in its permitting backlog in less than a year. Deputy DEP secretary John Ryder this week said his department has cut the permit backlog by 60 percent. In December of last year, there were over two thousand permits waiting for approval at DEP. Now, that number is down to 970. Ryder said the department sees about 40 thousand permit requests each year. He said that’s a “crushing workload.”
